


The Kids are Alright, The Parents Not So Much

by MissMoe



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abuse, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst and Humor, Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Male Character, Daddy Kink, Daddy's so gay for Papa, Domestic Violence, Drama & Romance, Father-Daughter Relationship, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff and Smut, Guilt, I can't tag for shit, Infidelity, Lots of existential baloney, Love Hurts, M/M, My parents are insane, Obsession, Past Incest, Past Rape/Non-con, Recreational Drug Use, Regret, Rimming, Rough Sex, Sequel, Sexy Times, Slice of Life, Spit As Lube, Stoppages, Sweet and Sappy Drivel, Teenagers, Why can't I stop cheating?, You can't escape your past, loss of sibling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-01-30 22:01:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 86,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12662286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissMoe/pseuds/MissMoe
Summary: Retired pro footballer James Miller struggles to raise three children and run a dive bar without being driven completely insane by his wayward spouse, Jean-Louis Lamarck. A sequel to Stoppages.





	1. Girls Rule

It had been a hardship at first, this whole commitment thing, but slowly his resistance—the armor of aversion and resentment—was worn down, imperceptibly, like water on stone, until it was eroded altogether and he was finally in thrall, fully owned and held for eternity. He would never leave him, nor would he ever desire such a thing again. He was happy at last.

***

“Is that what you’re wearing?” James asked. He let his face crumple into a malevolent scowl and threw his wide shoulders back in a reflexive fit of macho posturing. It didn’t matter that he was holding a pan of hardened scrambled eggs in one hand and a beat-up spatula in the other like some harried housewife and that his daughter’s Hello Kitty apron tied around his waist was ten sizes too small for his six-foot-six frame. He was going to let her know that he was still the alpha dog in his own home. “No way. Go put something else on. I can see your tits clear as day. You’re going to school, not a strip club."

“Dad!” Chloe, recently turned thirteen, gave a shriek that tore through the air at six-thirty in the morning like fingernails on a chalkboard and pounded both of her fists onto the hard granite countertop.

James’s back and neck involuntarily went into painful spasm. Chloe’s twin brother Benjamin chuckled into his plate of bacon and eggs but wisely kept his mouth dedicated to chewing rather than talking.

Their younger and more reckless half-brother Marcel, who wouldn’t turn eleven for another three months, peered closely at the front of Chloe’s form-fitting blouse and then nodded in agreement. “I can definitely see your nipples, sis,” he observed without moral judgment and any care for his own safety. He took another bite of his buttered whole grain toast, his bright blue eyes never leaving said nipples.

“You’re all a bunch of fucking perverts!” Chloe kicked back her stool, face red with teen girl indignation, and stomped back upstairs to her room, probably to put on something even more revealing just to spite her overbearing father.

“You owe me a dollar, missy!” James called after her. “I swear, that kid is going to put me in the goddamn grave.” He continued muttering obscenities under his breath as he went over to the counter to two large mason jars sitting next to the coffee maker, one labeled 'Dad' and the other adorned with a sticker of a colorful daisy. The jar with the flower sticker was full. James reached in and took out a badly wrinkled single and dropped it into the jar marked 'Dad', which now had perhaps ten singles compared to the two hundred or so stuffed into the other jar. Only the F-word counted or variations thereof; otherwise, Chloe would be a billionaire by now and James would be on the streets as a homeless person.

“She’s thirteen. She has breasts, and they’re only going to get bigger and better, so accept it.” Jean-Louis, never a morning person, was still drowsy and not about to get upset just because there was yet another mealtime standoff. Instead, he poured himself a cup of coffee and wondered how he was going to prevent James from killing them all. In his wildest imaginings, he had secretly removed the workout equipment from James’s weight room in the basement and replaced the mirrored walls with soundproof padding. He hadn’t quite decided if the room would be for him and the kids—a panic room of sorts to provide sanctuary from James whenever he went all Tasmanian Devil on them—or just for James, to keep him locked up if need be.

James had calmed down after leaving pro football almost ten years ago, but ever since Chloe hit puberty at age twelve, his testosterone levels had seemingly escalated in some kind of weird hormonal arms race that was threatening to culminate in World War III right inside their monstrosity of a house in Denver. What James didn’t realize, though, was that in any Dad vs. Teenage Daughter SmackDown, the girl always wins. Always.

Chloe returned to the kitchen wearing an orange number eighty-seven Broncos jersey over her original blouse with the intention of stuffing the jersey into her locker as soon as she got to school. Chloe was no dummy. She knew her father couldn’t possibly object to her donning his old number. She shot him a look that was equal parts feigned sweetness and unfeigned defiance and asked, “Can you see my tits _now_?”

Her two brothers didn’t even bother to rise to the bait.

“That’s better,” James conceded and shoved a strip of bacon into his mouth before he got into more trouble with her.

Jean-Louis merely smiled over his coffee cup, catching Chloe’s eye before she put her head down over her bowl of yogurt and grinned with shared complicity. Papa always looked out for her, she thought, was always in her corner cheering her on. At times, she had hated them both for the fact that she had no mother. Sure, her Aunt Meredith and Nana Laura always took her shopping when they visited during the holidays, and Papa’s best friend Kerrie was there for her when she had questions about sex and female stuff, and she had her girlfriends from school to go to the mall and gossip with, but the fact remained that she was in a family full of men and boys who never bothered to put down the toilet seat. It had been a sweet gig growing up—she had been treated like a princess, was always deferred to and put first—but then she had woken up one morning and found blood on her panties and things kind of went south emotionally. It was as if a void had opened up in her and she was falling into it with no one to grab her hand and say, “I’ve got you.”

Then she noticed that the changes in her body made the boys at school look at her a certain way and it made her feel powerful, boss mode powerful. She liked it. When she found that she could wield this uniquely feminine weapon at will, being motherless no longer seemed like a disadvantage; it meant she had no competition at home and could rule over the hapless males with an iron fist. And if anyone at school tried to make fun of her for her motherless condition, dared to humiliate her for having two fathers instead, she welcomed the challenge, savored the opportunity to put some zitty homophobe in his place, because she was a woman now and no gangly pubescent boy could stand a chance against her estrogen-fueled wrath.

“Oh yeah? Why don’t you say it to his face, cocksucker? My dad’ll make you his bitch in two seconds. And after he’s done fucking you up the ass for the hundredth time and making you shit all over yourself, he’s going to fuck your face until you’re sneezing cum out of your nose! Motherfucker!”

“Jesus, sis!” Marcel usually walked home from school with her on the days when she didn’t have soccer practice after class. “How do you come up with such…poetry?”

“Dunno. Been watching old episodes of _The Sopranos_.”

“Can I watch with you? This is better than Shakespeare.”

On another occasion, Marcel heard Chloe giving it to a boy named Zachary Bendictson, a beefy kid who had a reputation for being a real douche bag. There was a small mob of seventh graders gathered around the lockers outside of the social studies classrooms and right smack in the middle was Chloe cutting the air with her singsong voice.

“Yeah, Zach. My dad’s got a twelve inch dildo at home called the Probulator 5000 and it’s got your name written all over it. I’m gonna make you sit on it until you vomit your lunch and then I’m gonna make you suck on it and tell me what you ate for dinner yesterday! Motherfucker!”

Marcel stood back in awe. His best friend in fifth grade, Aaron Lovitz, who had AP math class at the middle school with him, was equally impressed.

“Your sister is fucking insane,” Aaron said. “My folks would kill me if I talked like that!”

“Yeah,” Marcel nodded with worshipful fervor. “Once she gets started…look out.”

“What’s a dildo, anyway?” asked Aaron.

“Take a wild guess.”

Chloe got called into the principal’s office the next day for that outburst, along with James and Jean-Louis. Zachary’s mother was an active member of the school board and his father ran one of the biggest car dealerships in town. The dealership was known for its local television ads featuring the unintentionally saucy tagline: “Bendictson BMW! We bend over backwards for you!”

“You may not threaten other students with twelve inch dildos,” said Principal Anna Strohman in the most serious of tones. She wore her dyed black hair in a big flattened bun that sat atop her head like a very large and dark M&M candy.

“That sissy told on me?” Chloe sneered. “Goddamn loser…I’ll bet he still wets his bed like a baby.” Then her eyebrows shot up with a bright thought. “Hey! What if it had been a tiny five-inch dildo? Would that have been okay? Five inches couldn’t possibly hurt anybody.”

Principal Strohman, a mature, sensible woman in her late fifties and an efficient, capable administrator, wasn’t in the mood for any nonsense. “Young lady, I don’t care if it’s five inches or fifty inches—”

“Holy shit! Fifty inches?” Chloe screeched with delight. “Where’d you see one of those?”

“ _Mr. Miller_.” Principal Strohman glared at James with an expression that could only be described as deeply disapproving, as if she had stated aloud, “This is your doing, isn’t it?”

James balled up his fists defensively. Why the hell was she looking at him? This wasn’t even his fault; he had never in his life threatened another person with a sex toy, although he had been unfairly accused of bludgeoning people with his own cock or, at best, waving it all over the place in uncalled for ways. “Chloe, shut up! Principal Strohman, I swear, I don’t know where she’s getting this from…we don’t keep any dildos in the house.”

James glanced over at Jean-Louis sitting on the other side of Chloe to make sure this was the case, but Jean-Louis just kept staring straight ahead at the snow globe perched on the bookshelf behind Principal Strohman’s right shoulder. In it was a scene of a tiny skier schussing down a miniature snow-covered mountain slope. At the base of the mountain in small blue letters it said 'Aspen' in jaunty comic sans. He couldn’t believe they were talking about dildos.

“No dildos,” Jean-Louis mumbled softly. He had fifteen minutes before he had to get back to his office in Aurora for a meeting with those pushy Exxon-Mobil people to discuss whether it was worthwhile for them to drill in Montana, elk and pumas be damned. Was there really such a thing as a Probulator 5000? If not, then Chloe was a creative genius. His heart swelled with pride at the thought of her sitting behind a sleek glass desk on the top floor of some starchitect-designed skyscraper, senior partner at some advertising firm that would put Ogilvy & Mather to shame. He smiled sweetly across the table with secret satisfaction.

Principal Strohman cleared her throat and went on. “Then there’s the issue of the language.”

Chloe let out a derisive snort and parted her legs, grabbed her crotch as if she had need of rearranging her balls, like she had seen her father do so many times the gesture had become second nature to her whenever she wanted to make a point. “What? Is it because I said _motherfucker_? That’s just my thing, my tag, you know, like the graffiti artists? Only, I’m an artist with words, and _motherfucker_ is my tag. See?”

James looked helplessly at Chloe and practically sobbed, “Who are you?”

All three of them—Chloe, Benjamin, and Marcel—attended public school though James could easily afford to send them to private school. He and his younger brother Ted had attended public schools and he didn’t want his own children to grow up to be unappreciative snobs like Jean-Louis, who had gone to a Catholic school run by Jesuit priests and was totally fucked up and insufferable. Well, maybe there were other mitigating reasons, like being French.

The children’s mother was Jean-Louis’s twin sister Charlotte, dead after taking a razor to her wrists ten years ago. Her passing was the strangest blessing in disguise although, at the time, it seemed properly tragic. James had agonized over what to tell the kids when they were old enough to ask questions like, “Why don’t we have a mother?” and “Did you love her?” and “Are we freaks?” In the end, it was Jean-Louis who had just told them the truth, flat out and with no excuses: “You don’t have a mother because she killed herself,” “Daddy and your mother hated each other,” and “Yes, we’re all freaks. No one is freakier than us.” That seemed to satisfy them just fine, at least for the time being.

When they had finally married after a seven-year courtship in Purgatory, it was just James’s side of the family in attendance at the private ceremony behind their house. Jean-Louis’s family did not approve of the union, though Jean-Louis had taken James and the kids to visit his family’s estate and vineyard in Arbois almost every year at Easter since then without anyone getting murdered. Jean-Louis’s widowed mother, Catherine, had softened her stance once it became apparent that her youngest child had actually made a formal commitment and was going to stand by it. She could no longer change his mind. Besides, God had given Jean-Louis back to her after his near fatal illness and she wasn’t so stubborn as to argue with the man upstairs. Her two older sons, Paul and Ernst, had done everything right—married well and given her six healthy grandchildren—and perhaps it would have been hubris to have wished for more than that. Hadn’t she already paid the price with the loss of her only daughter? Thank God her husband Charles hadn’t lived to see what had come of their twins: one dead from suicide and the other…slated for hellfire, too.

It wasn’t the sexual aspect of it that bothered her anymore; it was the fact that her son had hooked up with an American. That was the unforgiveable sin. As it was, there was a truce established after a wood chopping competition between James and Paul, Jean-Louis's eldest brother, followed by an arm wrestling match, both of which resulted in draws, and then a no-holds-barred Greco-Roman style fist fight that left both of them with black eyes, bloody mouths, split knuckles, cracked ribs and a very tenuous peace inked in cognac and Kentucky bourbon whiskey. For once, Jean-Louis could just enjoy the goings-on from the sidelines with his brother Ernst who, like James’s own brother Ted, was fairly tolerant of their relationship.

None of this changed the fact that Jean-Louis had forfeited everything to be with James, but at least the kids could know their grandmother and grand uncle, their uncles, aunts, and cousins on his side of the family, the French side, even if he himself had lost their approval and been cast outside the fold into an American wasteland. That was something Jean-Louis had done all on his own, long before the kids were born. Regardless, or perhaps because of it, he had made sure that the children had grown up speaking French, eating French, understanding the value of culture and good manners. But now that the twins were teenagers, he could see that he was fighting a losing battle…with James, especially when it came to Chloe.

“You can’t just lock her up!” Jean-Louis had taken Chloe to her first gynecological examination after she began menstruating, against James’s wishes. That James objected on both counts—the menstruating and the doctor’s visit—was something Jean-Louis wasn’t going to accept without protest. He knew Chloe would be interested in boys and he wanted her entry into sexuality to be safe and informed. “Not letting her have a gynecologist is not going to prevent her from becoming a woman! It’s too late for that and, besides, she’s going to grow up whether you like it or not.”

“She’s not getting birth control! I swear I’ll wring your neck if you do this behind my back! I mean it, Jean-Louis. You’re not turning my little girl into a whore.”

“Jesus Christ! What medieval century are you living in?”

“No fucking birth control!” James insisted. The veins in his neck were popping.

“So, what? You’re going to murder every guy who looks at her?”

“I’ll rip their fucking eyes out…”

“Superb. That’s just the perfect solution. Way better than the pill. Ripped out eyeballs. I’m sure the parents of those boys will really appreciate the free blindings.”

“Don’t get all sarcastic on me," James sneered. "You think I don’t know what those horny teenaged cock floggers want to do to her?”

“Oh, I’m sure you know. Who would know better than you, Mr. My-Dick-Is-Hard-All-The-Time? But just because they all want to have sex with her doesn’t mean they get to, so calm down.” The way Jean-Louis saw it, James was acting like some territorial bull elephant seal protecting his harem of cows, only his daughter was getting crushed by his own ultra he-man rampaging, along with any clueless male classmate who made the mistake of coming to the house hoping to get an autograph from a former Bronco only to be threatened with eyeball castration by an angry, paranoid father. This was just unacceptable and putting them in danger of a lawsuit.

“Mr. My-Dick-Is-Hard-All-The-Time?" asked James, his voice softening with wonder. "That’s a new one. Thanks, baby.”

Then there was a quiet knock on their bedroom door. “Dad?” It was Chloe.

“Yeah, sweetheart?”

“You owe me two dollars.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I stated in the summary, this story is a sequel to my other original work, Stoppages, and it begins roughly ten years after the end of events in Stoppages. What happened in between will be covered in various ways here, as well as events moving forward. Like almost everything I write, the narrative unfolds in a non-linear fashion. I'm not sure if any of this story will make sense if you haven't read the earlier work—I would like for it to stand on its own—but I'll leave that up to the reader to decide.


	2. Papa Don't Preach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chloe gets possessive during a family trip to Disney World. Jean-Louis's idea of parenting is rather unorthodox.

 

They didn’t take the kids to Disney World until Marcel was almost twelve and tall enough to meet the height requirement for the grown-up rides, the only rides worth getting on. If it were up to James, he would have strapped Marcel in as an infant on one of those zero-to-sixty-in-three-seconds rides and dealt with the collateral damage later. Jean-Louis wouldn’t consent to it; he was pretty sure that Marcel would have ended up hurled into some alligator-infested moat half a mile away.

“He’s _my_  son and I’m not letting you kill him just because you want to take him on that stupid Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster ride with you.”

“You’re no fun,” James countered. “They should make a Stinky Cheese Log Ride for you, or maybe some Hoity-Toity Wine-Tasting Elevator-Drop Extravaganza shit.”

“That last one makes no sense, you imbecile!" Jean-Louis shot back. "How could the wine possibly stay in the glass? Although, the Stinky Cheese Log Ride actually sounds doable.”

“Look, we did fucking Legoland in _third world Denmark_ because of you.”

“It’s the original one!” Jean-Louis reminded him.

“We _could_ have gone to the one in _Florida_ where we wouldn’t have had to eat that weird brown cheese. Christ! I can still taste that disgusting…what the hell was in that crap cheese anyway? Cow vomit?”

“That cheese is originally from _Norway_. Don’t blame the Danes for it.” Jean-Louis had to admit that the brunost was like Marmite or Icelandic Hákarl or cilantro, not so much an acquired taste as one that was either happily swallowed or immediately puked up.

They stayed at the Contemporary just because the monorail went right through the building. The other hotels within the park were newer, but overloaded with so much thematic junk that Jean-Louis just had to make a snide comment about it not feeling like they’ve left home, but the final decision wasn’t his to make anyway. The trip was a birthday gift for Marcel who, like any boy on the cusp of pubescence, wanted to stay in a hotel with a gigantic hole in the middle of it like some extruded triangular donut. Jean-Louis had gone to the then named Disneyland Paris, formerly known as Euro Disneyland, as a ten-year-old on one of his family’s vacations. His parents had purchased a one-day pass (they were on their way to Madrid for the summer) and were curious to see how awful it was. Jean-Louis recalled a bizarre boat ride accompanied by incessant singing, another ride on a mining car through a fake rocky landscape and, most vividly, getting elbowed repeatedly by mobs of overly enthusiastic German visitors. James had assured him that there was no way anything in Paris could compare to the Orlando site, so he was game to see it for himself.

James booked five days over the kids’ spring break with full access to all of the continuously multiplying theme parks. The first morning in the hotel dining room they argued over which park to cover that day. The process was supposed to be democratic, but because no one could agree on anything, they decided to go separate ways: Jean-Louis would take Marcel to Magic Kingdom and Epcot and James would take Benjamin and Chloe to wherever they wanted to go. On the second day, Chloe asked to join Jean-Louis and Marcel.

“All they want to do is go on the Aerosmith ride,” she complained.

Benjamin immediately perked up with a bright idea. “Dad, we should eat ten hot dogs before we get on it today and then barf it all up during the ride.” Benjamin was fourteen and already five-foot-ten and eating them out of house and home.

“That sounds like a plan, my man,” James said. He and Benjamin high-fived and went back to their self-made breakfast sandwiches which they had both constructed out of two cinnamon rolls stuffed with bacon and eggs in between.

“Try to get it on camera!” Marcel suggested. He had Googled each of the rides beforehand and was referring to the digital camera set up to instantly capture one of those precious moments in time; for a nominal fee, it gave satisfactorily terrified riders the opportunity to bring home a thoroughly unflattering photo souvenir of themselves shitting their pants.

“Maybe you should go with them today,” Jean-Louis told Marcel. “Chloe and I can hang out by the pool.” He was really hoping to just go back to their room and smoke a joint before lounging around with a long straw and a gallon of alcohol for the next eight hours.

“Oh, that’s a great idea, Papa. Marcel, go with Dad and Ben. Pleeeease.” Chloe smothered her younger brother with wet kisses.

Marcel knew she wanted to prance around in her bikini and flirt with boys. Whatever. He loved her and didn’t want to get on her bad side, so he went along with her wishes.

“Okay, I’ll go with Dad today,” he told her as he watched his father and brother shovel five thousand calories down their throats. “But I’m sitting in _front_ of you guys. I’m not letting anyone barf on _me_.”

***

Their ninth floor suite had a balcony overlooking the pool area and, after breakfast in the Mickey Mouse themed restaurant, Jean-Louis made a beeline for one of the lounge chairs while Chloe changed into her bathing suit, one of eight that she had brought along because that’s just how girls are. Their spacious room had two king sized beds, a large sofa, a coffee bar area with fridge and microwave, a separate seating area with a table and chairs and a very large and modern en suite bathroom with marble tiles and double sinks. All three kids fit comfortably on one bed while James took the other one with Jean-Louis. The only issue was general lack of privacy, except for the bathroom, which Chloe had first dibs on. If someone else needed to use it while she was doing whatever it is that teenaged girls do in bathrooms for hours at a time, they had to go down to the lobby and use one of the many public bathrooms available to the hotel’s patrons. So far, it wasn’t a problem and it gave them an excuse to explore the various indoor shops and sitting areas. Jean-Louis had to admit, the people running the Disney behemoth knew what they were doing. It was hard to resist the fantasy of happiness raining down on guests like some tropical magic fairy dust.

Chloe joined Jean-Louis on the balcony. There was a refreshing breeze and the sun hadn’t heated things up quite yet as she flopped herself down on one of the chairs wearing a flimsy two-piece turquoise and green ensemble.

“Are you going to swim today?” Jean-Louis asked. Her outfit was designed for lounging and being seen in, not for swimming, since it looked like it would dissolve into nothing if it touched water. He was grateful that James had left for Hollywood Studios already with the boys or there would have been some unpleasant yelling going on right about now. He offered her a hit on his joint, but she declined.

“Papa, you realize it’s only ten-thirty in the morning,” she commented dryly.

Jean-Louis shrugged. “We’re on vacation, ma bichette. Besides, your father wants me to put on a few pounds.” Jean-Louis had always been enviably trim and even though he would be thirty-eight in August, he had yet to grow thick around the waist like most men past their mid-twenties. If anything, he had to work hard to keep the weight on. The weed helped stimulate his appetite, not that he needed an excuse to indulge. He’d been a stoner his whole life and had no intention of stopping now. For their first wedding anniversary, Jean-Louis had asked James to convert one of their home’s mysterious no-purpose rooms into a smoking lounge for him, complete with an industrial grade air exchange system like they use in fancy cigar bars. It was his favorite room, his refuge from reality. “Don’t kids get high anymore?” he asked Chloe.

“Sure, but we usually don’t start in on it right after breakfast and it’s usually not our parents who are our dealers.” She flipped open an issue of French Vogue and starting rifling through the pages for pictures of hot male models. Jean-Louis had been twenty-three when Chloe and Benjamin were born and didn’t marry their father and come to live permanently with them until five years later. Chloe always thought of Jean-Louis as less of a parent and more of an ally, someone to stand between her and James when her biological father was being unreasonable, which was often the case more and more. She knew that her family arrangement was not exactly “normal” and there were plenty of instances when they all had to endure the cruelty that comes from ignorance and close-minded, self-righteous thinking, but she would never in a million years trade in her parents for anyone else. This was especially made true whenever she went over to her girlfriends’ houses and met their boring parents—the sexually frustrated mothers and the out-of-shape unattractive fathers—and was so grateful to have as her own parents two completely fucked up, exciting lunatics.

“What about Ben? I’ve never seen him smoke,” Jean-Louis said with concern.

“Ben? Are you nuts? He’d rather chop off his own arm.”

Benjamin had been playing baseball since he was eight and was the ace pitcher on his school’s team. Jean-Louis had been more than surprised when James had encouraged it over football, his own beloved sport.

“No, it’s gotta be baseball,” James had told Jean-Louis when Benjamin had shown interest in sports.

“But you hate baseball. Don’t you remember?”

“No, no, it’s gotta be baseball. Gotta get on God’s good side.” James had never explained to Jean-Louis the whole thing about God hating football, about God being a rabid baseball fan instead; he had no hard evidence to present other than the fact that he just _knew_ it. His heart told him so.

“Does he drink?” Jean-Louis prodded. They always had wine at dinner and Jean-Louis thought nothing of letting the kids have it slightly watered down, just as his own parents had served him wine as a child growing up in France, but Benjamin usually drank milk of all things, as if he were a hulking baby. Jean-Louis blamed James for this infantilizing weirdness, all that insistence on sticking to a traditional Midwest upbringing, whatever that meant. “I mean, with his friends? Does he drink with his friends at least?” He didn’t expect Benjamin to be the same with his family as he was with his own peers. He was fourteen after all and should by rights be getting himself into various sorts of adventures.

Chloe let out an exasperated sigh. “I’m telling you, he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t get high. He’s like a monk. All he cares about is baseball and being the best pitcher and making it into the big leagues.”

“I really need to have a talk with him,” Jean-Louis mumbled. “At least he has a girlfriend.” Benjamin was gorgeous: blond hair and blue eyes and already had an impressive physique on a tall, lanky frame. James was going to start him on weight training next summer and Jean-Louis knew better than to oppose James on that front. The man was more addicted to working out than ever and he was chomping at the bit to get his eldest son hooked as soon as possible.

“He has more than his share of girls interested in him,” Chloe agreed. She had her eyes glued on an ad featuring a dark-haired, swarthy model named Guillaume with perfect washboard abs and piercing green eyes.

“Is he fucking them?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Papa. He doesn’t tell me everything!”

“Why not? Why shouldn’t he?” Jean-Louis and his own twin sister Charlotte had shared everything and he couldn’t imagine why Benjamin would ever withhold anything from Chloe. “You’re his sister, his half. There should be no one more precious than you.”

Chloe put down her magazine and looked over at Jean-Louis, who was gazing blankly in the direction of Magic Kingdom in the near distance. There were times when she was struck dumb by his manner and attitude, a kind of sadness that had no bottom. He had suffered deeply in his life; even when he was smiling, she could still see it in his eyes, that look of loss and regret, and it had everything to do with her mother, the woman who had given birth to her and her two brothers, the woman she and Benjamin had never really met and whom Marcel couldn’t even remember though he had spent the first year of his life with her. They had only seen pictures of her, seen how beautiful she was, and heard Jean-Louis speak now and then of her, always with reverence and only briefly before he would go silent. Her father James never spoke of Charlotte at all.

Her and her brothers knew of Jean-Louis’s grave illness, his battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his near death when her and her siblings were too little to even remember him. They knew that their father and Jean-Louis had had a long, tumultuous relationship before things had finally settled down into a committed tumultuous marriage. Jean-Louis had been in her life as far back as she could recollect, yet there was something so ephemeral about him, as if he could disappear at any moment and be gone from them forever. Her father had the solidity and permanence of a mountain; Jean-Louis was like the perfect summer day, too few and too brief.

“No,” Chloe said finally. “No, he’s not fucking them…yet.” She and Benjamin were indeed very close and, yes, he did tell her most things, but she didn’t tell Ben _all_ her secrets, so she had to assume that he held some things back also. In fact, there were things that she would tell Marcel that she wouldn’t bother discussing with Ben. Ben was uncomplicated, easy going and open, but he existed on one plane, was very goal-oriented and focused. Marcel was complex, unpredictable and, though he was two years younger, more sophisticated in his thinking than Ben. She hated to admit it, but Marcel was much brighter than either Ben or herself. Although Marcel was now in the fifth grade, his academic courses were all advanced placement level and he could do her own seventh grade homework in his sleep. It was Jean-Louis who had insisted that he be kept in with his own peer group rather than be stuck with a bunch of fourteen-year-olds but, honestly, Marcel could out-trash-talk anyone in her class thanks to the training she had given him. She liked moulding him, shaping him into someone who she knew would be formidable one day. Ben was her father’s son; Marcel was something else.

“Does he know how to use a condom?” Jean-Louis knew that they had something called “sex education” in America. He and James had had to sign a consent form that the twins had brought home from school the year before to allow them to watch a short film about how babies are made. In Europe, kids are taught about sex early on, practically in kindergarten if one lived in one of the Nordic countries. Jean-Louis had learned about penises and vaginas when he was eight years old and he went to a Catholic school! He could still see Father François demonstrating intercourse with a zucchini and an empty jelly jar and the boys in class all roaring with laughter. It was great.

“Yeah, Papa, they showed us how to use condoms. Ugh.” Her sex ed teacher had been the girl’s gym teacher, a very butch lesbian named Ms. Castellano. There was something not quite right about Ms. Castellano rolling a rubber onto a cucumber, _as if_ she had ever let a penis near her in her life or had use for a condom.

“It’s important to use protection,” Jean-Louis told her. “Don’t ever let a boy have sex with you without a condom.” He looked over at her and saw that she was annoyed. “STDs. You don’t want that. Promise me, Chloe. You won’t let some boy give you a disease.”

“I promise.”

He smiled then and finished the last of his joint.

***

They went down to the pool after a light snack of fresh fruit cut into the shape of cartoon mouse ears. Jean-Louis swam laps while Chloe soaked at the shallow end. She didn’t see any cute boys her own age—all the teenagers were probably on that stupid Aerosmith ride or the Tower of Terror—and sitting around the pool were just some grey-haired old people and a handful of moms who were salivating over her Papa. It was gross. She felt like going up to those women and telling them that they could take a hike unless they had a massive dick swinging between their legs. Her Papa had high standards when it came to sexual partners and it would take more than a pair of sagging tits and flabby thighs with varicose veins before he would…what the fuck? She saw him chatting with a blond haired woman in her late forties at the far end of the pool and he was actually laughing and letting her touch his shoulder as they talked. Then they both got out of the pool and sat next to each other on a double chaise lounge. Chloe was flabbergasted. She had never thought of Jean-Louis as being anything except her father’s partner, his spouse and the love of his life. She had never considered that her Papa could be attracted to women outside of his friend Kerrie, yet it was obvious that he was having a grand old time chatting up this…this…slutty she-devil cunt.

Chloe watched them talking animatedly for a good fifteen minutes before another woman joined them. Now her Papa was surrounded on both sides with these two cougars and didn’t seem the least bit mortified when they started touching his hair. The one who was a brunette, and who had obviously had one too many Botox sessions at the dermatologist, actually rested a hand on his thigh! Why wasn’t he jumping up in disgust? This was much worse than what would happen at the various school events, when she could see her classmates’ mothers eye-raping him, because James was always there right next to him with a proprietary hand on his shoulder. But Dad was off riding roller coasters and barfing up hot dogs and it was all up to Chloe now to protect her Papa. Jean-Louis was wearing a pair of light blue swim trunks that suddenly looked ridiculously revealing, his taut body glistening under the sun, his abs flexing as he made a gesture with his arms that had both women gasping in delight. Chloe decided she’d had enough of this pornographic display.

She got out of the pool and stalked right over to them and stood at the foot of the chaise lounge with her hands on her hips. “Papa.” She didn’t even deign to look at the women. “I’m ready to go to Animal Kingdom. Can we go now? Please?”

He gazed up at her with his blue eyes the color of the summer sky and said with undisguised affection, “Bien sûr, ma petite.”

Take _that_ , bitches. Chloe now gave each woman a smug smile of victory as Jean-Louis excused himself in his usual polite way. She noticed the cellulite on the blond woman’s thighs and thought, Papa can’t stand cottage cheese.

“Don’t tell me you actually liked those skanky women,” Chloe accused as they rode the elevator back up to their room to shower and change into street clothes. Her face was flushed and it wasn’t just from the sun and any second now she would start bawling her eyes out.

Jean-Louis peered down at her with thoughtful curiosity. She had hit an age when jealousy and possessiveness were going to rule her emotions and she would end up a prisoner of her own fury if she didn’t learn to take control. If he were James, he would have told her that she was being silly and stupid and to stop throwing tantrums, but he wasn’t James. He understood her. She was his sister’s daughter through and through and one day she would get everything she wanted, if he could help it. So instead of reprimanding her, he kissed the top of her head fondly and hugged her to him and said, “Weren’t they just the worst? You saved me, ma bichette. What would I do without you?” And her anger melted away instantly.

***

They went on the Kilimanjaro Safari where they rode in an open-sided vehicle that took them through an “African” landscape filled with the requisite flora and fauna of that continent: herds of wildebeest and gazelles grazed peacefully alongside overfed pairs of cheetahs and sleeping lions; a giraffe turned its head as they passed by not more than twenty yards away before boredom made it go back to eating a lunch of spiny twigs; a lone white rhino rolled in the dust before righting itself and taking a purposeful dump, then trotted away with as much dignity as one could have after an act of public defecation.

“This ride stinks,” Chloe said as she held her hand in front of her nose. “Everything smells like shit.”

They headed to Discovery Island with its iconic Tree of Life, a gigantic man-made Baobob tree that rose 145 feet into the air like some botanical mushroom cloud. Its thick trunk was covered in relief carvings of animals living and extinct. They ate a lunch of chicken fingers and fries and then sauntered through DinoLand U.S.A. and went on the ride simply called Dinosaur. It had originally been called Countdown to Extinction—a way more exciting name—and it took one through the spooky Cretaceous period complete with deafeningly noisy animatronic “terrible lizards” like Iguanodon and Velociraptor and Carnotaurus. This was the same ride that had “killed” a thirty-year-old man from Indiana in 2005. The man wore a pacemaker, but most people liked to believe that it was the creepy dinosaurs that had given him a heart attack.

Jean-Louis was a paleontologist, just as his own father Charles had been, although it had been years since he had done any field work. He had been invited by the Denver Museum of Nature and Science to participate as a guest researcher on the Snowmastodon Project when he was just twenty-one and, as chance would have it, ran into James at a local bar. They had first met six years prior at the University of Michigan when Jean-Louis had been some kind of wunderkind graduate student and James was struggling academically through his junior undergraduate year as the starting tight end for the Wolverines and needing to pass his final general education requirement, an Earth Science course in which Jean-Louis was assigned as James’s tutor. Jean-Louis had been a boy then, not quite fifteen. When they met up again in Denver, he wasn’t a boy any longer, and James’s life would never be the same.

“He totally fucked up my world,” was the way James had explained it to the kids, the same way another man might have said, “And then I met my soul mate.”

It took over seven years of what her father called “goddamn fucking hell in a shitstorm” before Jean-Louis had agreed to commit to him, to come live with them, to stay, to belong to them forever. Even after a decade as a family, Jean-Louis spoke very little of his early days, preferring to focus on the present, the now, and not the past or even the future. “The past and the future,” Jean-Louis always told them, “can stay there.”

Her parents argued a lot, over everything and anything it seemed. Well, actually, it was more James screaming and Jean-Louis ignoring him. Her father was a typical American meathead jock—loud, brash, and dripping with smug self-confidence. He would accuse Jean-Louis of being “so fucking French,” of being arrogant, obnoxious, a know-it-all and a snob. If things got too out of hand—these arguments often unfolded at the dinner table with the kids listening eagerly for the F-bomb and tallying up the amount owed—Jean-Louis would merely pour himself another glass of wine and, if the meal were finished, would simply get up and disappear into his smoking lounge while James was still in mid-rant. Sometimes James wouldn’t even notice that Jean-Louis had left the room and it was usually up to Benjamin to tell him to quit the diatribe.

“Dad, Papa’s probably on his second joint by now. Can we have ice cream for dessert? Oh…and you owe Chloe twenty-three dollars.”

The real arguments, though, normally took place in their bedroom behind closed doors. That’s when the kids could hear _both_ of them yelling. In the past, most of the fights centered on someone named Guy-Manuel and another person named Oliver, old friends of Jean-Louis who were apparently suitable targets for murder in James’s playbook. Later on they had argued about Kerrie and Papa’s unfaithfulness. Those fights were vicious and violent with lots of shouting and swearing and thumping noises and then very odd moans and groans. After a while, the twins realized that these fights were being followed up by what could only be some pretty wild sex. They first arrived at this conclusion when Marcel, seven at the time, had gone unbidden into their parent’s room because the noise was keeping him from sleeping and saw what James told him was just “naked wrestling.” Marcel’s bedroom was next to the master bedroom and he had to endure the worst of the ruckus, although Chloe, whose room was next to Marcel’s, could hear it all, too. Benjamin, one door further down, was a very sound sleeper and usually claimed ignorance or maybe he was too busy playing with himself to care about what his parents were doing. After the “naked wrestling” revelation, the kids all received wireless headphones for Christmas the next month and were encouraged to use them day and night.

Lately, however, the arguments were all about Chloe. James lived in abject fear of his menstruating daughter. It could be anything—an offhand remark about the weather, a take-out order gotten wrong, an innocent comment about her appearance horribly misinterpreted—who knows, but it would be enough to precipitate angry tears, high-pitched screaming, and accusations of unfairness or child abuse or tyrannical behavior on his part. During these stormy fits, Jean-Louis would sit back and watch with a bemused smile, seemingly oblivious to Chloe’s towering wrath, perhaps because her fury was leveled at James, and not at Jean-Louis, who could do no wrong in Chloe’s eyes. James would look at her and wonder what had happened to the sweet, laughing, happy baby girl she had been once. Benjamin had been a nightmare as an infant, a poster child for colic, but now the roles were reversed. His older son was a delight while his daughter had turned into the reincarnation of her dead mother. James had barely known Charlotte, but even during those limited dealings she had trampled him with her dainty feet and now her daughter, who stood over a foot shorter and one hundred fifty pounds lighter than him, was kicking his ass on any given day. Jean-Louis was no help. They disagreed on just about everything regarding Chloe. James wanted to protect her, as any responsible father would, but Jean-Louis, in James’s mind, wanted to party with her like the barely reformed slut that he was. Jean-Louis was more than unapologetic; he had the nerve to tell James he was wrong in his approach to childrearing.

“You are such a hypocrite. You and your American Puritanism! You are the most avid consumer of porn, you’ve objectified women your whole life, but when it comes to our daughter, you expect her to remain a virgin.”

“She’s _my_ daughter, okay? She came from _these_ puppies.” James pointed to his balls in case Jean-Louis was too dense to catch his meaning. “If she were _your_ daughter, you’d be putting a fucking padlock on her vagina, too.”

“How and why in God’s name would I ever want to do that? Are we a bunch of sadists now?”

“I want you to stop contradicting me in front of her!”

“When do I ever do that? I never say a thing!”

“That’s what I mean. You never say a thing. You never back me up!”

“How can I back you up when you threaten to lock up her vagina? You don’t own her genitalia.”

“Yes I fucking do!”

“Can you hear yourself? How many girls did you have sex with in college? Did it ever occur to you that all those chicks you banged were all some other men’s daughters? They all had fathers, just like you? What did you think you were doing?”

“That was different. This is _my_ daughter we’re talking about and no one’s banging her under _my_ watch! Can’t you _for once_ agree with me? Just one goddamn time?”

“No. Not on this. You’re being unreasonable…”

“Oh! Reason-schmeeson! That’s all such a fucking crock of shit! Fine. I’ll do this on my own then. If you wanna be such an asshole about this…”

“You’re the one who’s being the asshole. Don’t blame me if she fucks the whole varsity football team just to get back at you!”

“ _What_ did you say?” James’s face looked like it had exploded ten seconds ago and then reassembled into something made out of raw hamburger meat.

“You heard me...” Jean-Louis muttered. He started backing towards the door, fingers twitching as he reached behind him for the handle, but before he could make a mad grab for freedom James had him in a chokehold and was breathing into his ear with hot, wet, exhales of rage.

“The only one who’s going to get a varsity football team’s worth of cock is you, you ungrateful, unfaithful, unrepentant piece of shit!”

Even as James went at him, Jean-Louis kept up the protestation. “That’s not fair! It’s not cheating if you know about it! I’m French! Ow! Merde! Fuck…ahh…oh…oohh…yes, daddy…I’m all yours…”

“I know it, baby…I love you so much…”

 


	3. Like Father, Like Son

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James and Jean-Louis argue over the consequences of Benjamin's injury.

 

Benjamin loved them both, equally and unreservedly. How could he not? He had only ever known them to be his parents, Dad and Papa, and he couldn’t imagine being in any other family. He had to admit that his parents had their issues, were both fairly insane, each in his own unique way, but it made for an interesting life. His biological father, James, was six-foot-six and two hundred forty-five pounds of USDA Grade A bluster and brawn, a former Broncos starting tight end and four-time Pro Bowler and now the sole owner and proprietor of The Bratty Cat Pub, a dive of a bar in the seedy part of Denver which catered to rowdy frat boys and served as a sanctuary for older guys whose wives were menopausal. Jean-Louis was six-foot-two and one hundred eighty-five pounds of hard lean muscle, brains, and unapologetic French insolence, a paleontologist who specialized in biostratigraphy. His parents had little in common and rarely agreed on anything, yet Benjamin had never known two people to be locked together like stars caught in an unbreakable gravitational embrace, slowly, inexorably falling into each other, on their way to becoming one entity and going supernova.

Growing up, his friends at school had often asked him if he missed having a mother, but since he had no recollection of the woman who had given birth to him, he could only say “no” in perfect honesty. He had never had a mother for all intents and purposes, so how could he miss her absence? He had Dad and Papa and a twin sister and a younger half-brother and life was good. The kids at school may have thought it odd that his parents were both men, but to him, there was nothing more normal. Later, when he became aware of his own sexuality, he asked James, “Am I supposed to like boys or girls?” His father’s reply was, “Like whoever you want. In the end, you really don’t have a choice.” That sounded rather dire, so he asked Jean-Louis the same question. His answer was, “You’ll know when you fall in love. And you’ll be helpless against it.” That sounded even worse.

But then, Benjamin fell in love. With baseball. He had enrolled in a summer training camp when he was eight and found that he enjoyed it: being on the field, running, batting, fielding, the camaraderie of his teammates and coaches. He joined his school’s team, where they had him try out all the positions and discovered that he could pitch with amazing accuracy. His idol was the great Mariano Rivera, the Yankees' legendary closer, and he wanted to be able to throw a cutter just like him one day, to be known for one devastating pitch. In the meantime, though, he was slowly working his way through a mastery of all the pitches: fastballs, breaking balls, changeups. He could tell that James wanted him to be dominant as a pitcher, to be one of those intimidating forces on the mound, like a Roger Clemens or a Randy Johnson, men who could put fear into a batter just by the mere _thought_ that he might be in the mood to give a guy a close shave with a 100 mph fastball up and in at the chin. But Benjamin was more interested in being a finesse pitcher. He wanted longevity and consistency.

His parents came to almost all of his games when he was slated to pitch, although Jean-Louis usually sat up high in the bleachers so he could smoke a joint in peace while James stood right behind the dugout screaming at the top of his lungs and embarrassing himself shamelessly.

“Dad, you know that it’s the catcher and the coach who decide on the pitches, not you,” Benjamin told him after a game in which the home plate umpire had to reprimand James for interference. The entire team was at a Smashburger celebrating another victory over their cross-town rivals, the Englewood East Eagles. Their own team was called the Pinewood High Panthers and they were sitting pretty with a 9-1 record so far that spring.

“Fucking spare me,” James complained. “Your coach is a pussy. He should have let you go inside on that skinny twat. Push him off the plate. Bounce one off his helmet.”

At that, Jean-Louis shot James a disgusted look. “Bounce one off his helmet? Do you want Ben to be suspended?” Jean-Louis was baked and really enjoying the fries dipped in “smash sauce” and more talkative than usual. “Benjamin. Don’t listen to him. He thinks you can play baseball like it’s football and just go around breaking ribs and giving people concussions for the fun of it.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” James put down his second Build-Your-Own burger and chewed violently before washing down his mouthful of perfectly seared ground beef with a gulp of lemonade. “Since _when_ do you get to tell my son how to play football?”

“I know all the rules,” Jean-Louis stated.

Chloe was at a girlfriend’s house for a sleepover, or else she would have whipped out her phone and readied herself to record all the ensuing F-bombs, but it was Marcel who was with them and he perked up because this was shaping up to be an interesting fight. Baseball was Jean-Louis’s territory, having lived in New York and been a Mets fan, while James had been a star athlete in the NFL. James’s interest in baseball had been piqued recently, in the last few years, prompted solely by Benjamin’s talent, but he wasn’t going to let Jean-Louis denigrate his beloved football.

“You better choose your words carefully, sweetheart,” James threatened.

Jean-Louis wasn’t backing down. “Fine. I seem to recall certain players wearing black and gold who were paid bonuses for purposely injuring opposing players. Remember that? Did it ever occur to you that you might have been targeted?”

“We weren’t playing the Saints that day.” James’s career had ended during a game against the Seahawks in which he was hit by three opposing players and ended up partially paralyzed for months. He would never play football again, the only thing he had ever known and excelled at for the better part of his life.

“Okay,” said Jean-Louis. He was stoned, but not so much that he didn’t realize his own mistake. This was neither the time nor the place to bring up a terrible event in their lives, not in front of the kids especially, though they already knew all about it. “I’m sorry, James. Forgive me.”

Marcel looked up at Jean-Louis and saw his genuine contrition, then he looked across the table at Benjamin and saw that he understood that now would be a good time to say something sarcastic to defuse the bomb, hell, _anything_ before James lost it and did something stupid, like toss a table across the room.

“Don’t worry, guys,” Benjamin said lightheartedly. “I won’t bean anyone in the head until I’m ready to break his ribs when he comes after me.”

*** 

Benjamin always enjoyed his time spent alone with either one. Those were the rare moments when there would be no arguing, just opportunities for a boy to observe someone with more experience and learn how to make his way through life as a man. His father would often bring him or Marcel along to the occasional guest appearance or autograph session at one venue or another, an event related to the NFL or perhaps some product he was endorsing or something he was doing for charity. Jean-Louis always refused to go to these PR stunts, except for one event, an ESPY awards dinner one year. They were in London weeks earlier—Jean-Louis attending a conference sponsored by the Geological Society and everyone else tagging along for a brief family vacation—and Jean-Louis insisted that James go all-out, throw-back bespoke Savile Row with a custom-made striped suit with wide lapels. It actually worked; James had the size to pull it off. Jean-Louis dressed head to toe in Versace. They both looked like _gods_.

It was no surprise to Benjamin that James was a chick magnet if one liked a certain type of woman, the kind of woman who could be an “escort” in Vegas or a Playboy centerfold or a waitress at Hooters. His father also attracted other loud-mouthed jocks who looked like they spent their spare time in competitive eating contests and who had barely scraped by with a 2.00 GPA in college. Jean-Louis, on the other hand, was like an enormous mound of lavender in an apiary when it came to anything bipedal of either gender. That women would find him attractive was a given. He had the kind of hair that drove females wild with lust—honey-gold tresses with just a slight curl that screamed, “Touch me! You know you want to.” That he destroyed an equal number of men was one of those weird quirks that defied explanation. Even with the long hair, which Jean-Louis kept in honor of Charlotte, there was nothing remotely feminine about him. All his features and actions were undoubtedly masculine, although they didn’t bleed into the chest-thumping, tree-marking territory staked out by James. No, he was just one of those rare people whose beauty was transcendent and obliterating. His Dad had once referred to Jean-Louis as a walking EMP device. That just about summed it up.

*** 

In his sophomore year in high school, Benjamin developed soreness in the elbow of his throwing arm halfway through the season. When the team made it into the district playoffs, Benjamin was determined to be the horse—his coaches and teammates, not to mention James, expected no less of him—so he said nothing until he threw a slider in the eighth inning of game one and felt a sharp pain and his arm go dead. The team went on to win the game and then lose the next three games to be eliminated, but Benjamin’s season was done in other ways. The X-ray and MRI revealed both an olecranon stress fracture and damage to the ulnar collateral ligament. Much to Jean-Louis’s shock, the coach suggested Tommy John surgery for the UCL injury.

“No,” Jean-Louis told James. “Absolutely not.” He knew all about Tommy John surgery, having watched the Mets ruin one ace pitcher after another: Matt Harvey, Zack Wheeler, Jacob deGrom, Steven Matz, Noah Syndergaard. Tommy John surgery was epidemic in the major leagues and it had insinuated itself down through the minors and beyond. Bone spurs? Pulled groin muscle? Herniated disc? Tommy John surgery to the rescue! “I swear, if you do this to Benjamin, I will leave you. I will take the kids and leave you! I don’t care if you hunt me down and kill me, I won’t let you do this to my sister’s boy!”

“Calm the fuck down! He’s my kid, too! You don’t understand,” James pleaded. “Ben has the potential to be great. He has it in him. Why take this away from him?”

“Let him use his talent some other way. He’s sixteen years old, for Christ’s sake. If he has this surgery now, how many more times will he have it in the future? Two? Three more times before he’s twenty-five?”

“Stop exaggerating.”

“Does that sound like a successful career to you? Done at twenty-five?”

“Yeah,” retorted James weakly. “That’s pro sports.” Then he came out with it. “Listen to me, please. It’s important that Ben sticks with baseball. You don’t know this, but God is a baseball fan, and I can’t have Ben...”

“What?” Jean-Louis stared at him, incredulous. “Have you lost your mind?”

They were standing in the parking lot after the appointment with the specialist in sports medicine. Being a growing teenager and always hungry, Benjamin had gone to the Subway shop across the street after the exam and consultation, where he was sitting by the window and eating a roast beef sandwich while he watched the two of them arguing. A part of him felt like he had let everyone down, including himself, but the doctor had told them that the injury might resolve itself without surgery if he rested the arm. That meant giving up travel league over the summer, but Benjamin was willing to accept that. Surgery or not, he was in no condition to pitch for some time. If he wasn’t 100% by the fall, then he had another option up his sleeve. He would talk to his parents about it later, after they had finished duking it out. Meanwhile, his Dad was gesticulating like a man on death row with two seconds to make his case before the firing squad started shooting. Based on visuals alone, it looked like Papa was going to win this round easily.

“It’s true, baby. I’ve never said anything to you about it, but…God told me…I mean, I figured it out, when you came back to me, I figured out what He wanted.”

“What are you talking about?” Jean-Louis was getting worried. James had never mentioned God to him before outside of all the swearing.

“Us. I’m talking about us.” How could James explain this without sounding like a lunatic? “The day you came back to me…when you asked me to give you Marcel…Christ, I could’ve killed you…whatever…that night I talked to God. I got down on my knees and I prayed. All I could think about was…where did I go wrong? What did I do to make everything so fucking awful for us? What did I do to piss Him off so badly? And then, it came to me. It was so…clear. The clues were so obvious…Big Papi, all those aces from Japan, those defectors from Cuba, A-Rod’s monster contract. Don’t you see? God is a baseball fan. He goes out of His way to pull all those strings for those fuckers. And what did _I_ do? I chose _football_ and He obviously hates football. That’s why He punished me, why He punished _us_. Do you understand? I chose the wrong sport. I can’t let Benjamin make the same mistake. He _has_ to stick with baseball.”

Jean-Louis stood with his mouth agape. This was no act, no joke. James was dead serious. Almost to himself, Jean-Louis mumbled, “All along I’ve thought that _I’m_ the one who’s insane.” He slumped against James’s Chevy Tahoe and pressed both palms against his eyelids and groaned. “Okay, James. God is a baseball fan. Good for Him. But I’m still saying ‘no’ to the surgery. God can do whatever He likes but He’ll get Benjamin over my dead body.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake! Didn’t you hear a single word I just said?” James shouted.

“Yes, I heard every single word and you’re making me ill. So very, very ill.” Jean-Louis’s phone dinged with a reminder that he had twenty minutes before his next meeting. He sighed and rubbed his eyes again. “I have to get back to my office. We can talk about this later.”

He started walking to his car, a 1978 BMW 320i 2-door sedan with an unappetizing pale grey-green exterior and dark green leather interior. He had found it at a local car dealership with a sticker price of $11,000. The car only had 9,000 miles on it, having been owned by a man who died the year after he bought it and whose widow had kept it garaged the next thirty years. The second owner, a manager of a flooring emporium, had purchased the car from the widow for his teenaged son to tinker with. The boy proceeded to jazz up the interior by stapling an old remnant of orange shag carpeting over the headliner.

James had begged Jean-Louis not to consider the car and could barely squeeze into the passenger seat for the test drive. “Baby, please, it looks like…I don’t know…like one of those Canadian geese took a gigantic dump inside Hugh Hefner’s den. If you really want a BMW, I’ll buy you a new one. How about that nice black 7 Series sedan? Oh, Jesus, this car smells like a fucking hamster cage.”

Back at the dealership, Jean-Louis had told the sales agent, “It looks like a humungous bird dropping and stinks of rat urine.” He offered $7,000 and drove it home. Then he had James spend two weekends detailing the car, just as James used to do as a teenager when his father Peter had owned an auto body shop. By the end, the shag carpeting was gone and it no longer smelled like a rodent’s nest, but Jean-Louis had insisted on keeping the original colors.

“Do you wanna go out for dinner tonight?” James called after him, hoping to smooth things over. He looked across the street and waved his arms at Benjamin to let him know it was time to leave.

“No,” said Jean-Louis as he got into his pea-soup-mobile of a car. “I think I’ll make us a cyanide soufflé.”

*** 

James ordered pizza, just in case Jean-Louis wasn’t kidding about the cyanide, although he wasn’t too far off in sensing that American muscle wasn’t going to win the battle this time. Jean-Louis, after all, had been named after an ancestor who had died in the World War I battle of Verdun, which, along with the battle of Somme, epitomized both the unspeakable horror of trench warfare and the sheer tenacity and stubbornness of the human spirit when pushed to the limit. Jean-Louis’s namesake had been buried under a mudslide brought on by unrelenting rain and artillery barrages and James was pretty sure it would take as much to change his partner’s mind. So he decided to play it cool.

“Here,” James said, pouring Jean-Louis a glass of Tempranillo. “This is that one that you like.” He showed him the bottle with the running boar on the label and set it down in front of him. “I picked up a case of it for you on my way home today.”

“If you’re trying to buy my…”

“No, I’m not trying to buy your anything. Can’t I do something nice without you thinking I’m trying to bribe you?” James struggled to find the right balance of outrage and magnanimity in his tone of voice. He didn’t want to start a fight right away.

Jean-Louis sat back and took a long sip, silently watched James serving pizza to the kids. He had met his best friend Kerrie for lunch after his meeting and told her about Benjamin’s injury and James’s eagerness to pursue the surgery option. He also told her about James’s God-is-a-baseball-fan theory and his own desire to pack up the kids and hightail it out of James’s life.

“You know you can’t do that, even if he’s totally insane,” Kerrie had told him.

“No? Why not?” It was a rhetorical question. “Tell me why not.”

“Because he’d probably kill the kids first just to punish you.”

“He would never kill the kids. Just slowly ruin them with surgery,” Jean-Louis had bemoaned. “The problem is, he really thinks he’s doing the right thing for Benjamin and all I can do is make threats and delay the inevitable. I have no say in this, do I? He’s not my son.”

“How is he not your son? I’m sure if you asked Ben, he’d say you are every bit as much his father as James is. If Stephanie and I had kids, it wouldn’t matter whose vagina the kid came out of, whose egg got fertilized. You either love them and want them or not. And if you don’t want them, then you’re not their parent. The DNA doesn’t really matter.”

Kerrie’s words of advice ran through Jean-Louis’s head as he emptied his glass and poured another. Maybe he did have a say in the matter, but how to present his case without…

“So, uh, I was thinking,” Benjamin said as he polished off his first slice. “You know I love pitching, but if I can’t be the best…you know, if I can’t go out there and give it my all every time, then maybe I should try something else.”

“Like another position?” asked James. All the big sluggers tended to play either first base or prowled the outfield. That would mean Benjamin could play every day rather than every five days. Glory could still be his if he could make a name for himself hitting home runs. His boy had Rookie MVP written all over him. “You could be the next Bryce Harper.”

“Uh…I was thinking more about a different sport.” Ben gave James a nonchalant look.

“What? Like hockey?” James glanced across the table at Jean-Louis. “What do you think about that, baby? You wouldn’t have anything against hockey, would you?” James loved hockey; it was, in fact, his first love, sports-wise, as a child growing up in Michigan. And he didn’t think God had any feelings good or bad regarding hockey.

“If Ben doesn’t mind getting a new set of teeth and suffering a few concussions, then, no, I have nothing against hockey,” Jean-Louis demurred. His cousin Pierre had played for the ZSC Lions, the Swiss hockey team based in Zurich, as well as a former lover, unbeknownst to James. The sport was known for its violence, but Benjamin was certainly big enough to compete and had been skating since he was three, the same age that James was when his own father Peter had started taking him to the ice rink.

“Will you quit your sarcasm?” snapped James. “This is high school, not the NHL.”

“No, Dad, I wasn’t thinking hockey,” Benjamin explained. “Hockey’s okay…I was thinking I could try out for varsity football if this elbow thing doesn’t go away. I think I would make a good quarterback.”

“Like Big Ben Roethlisberger!” Marcel quipped. “You even have the same first name!” Marcel loved football and baseball and had a head full of stats that he could rattle off at will.

Jean-Louis took one look at James’s stunned face and burst into laughter. “Well, James. Like father, like son. Isn’t that what they say?”

“I was never a quarterback,” James muttered, his face falling with dread. He was never a quarterback—not because he didn’t want to be one—but because he couldn’t throw an accurate lateral pass during a simple bubble screen to save his life. He had swallowed the humiliation in high school but had never forgotten the pain of it. It stung as much at forty-five as it had at fifteen.

Benjamin was confused. His father had had a successful career in pro football, had landed a hefty contract and played with passion and skill until it all ended with a spinal injury that left him partially paralyzed for months. He was still involved in the sport through his charitable work, was still invited to NFL media events, even if it was just the NFL’s loosely disguised ploy at being “inclusive.” He had always taken him and his siblings to the Broncos home games, always had the games on at home and at the bar and, though his father had never pushed him to pursue football, Benjamin had assumed it would make him happy if he showed interest in playing. Well, now he _was_ interested and James did not look the least bit thrilled.

“Dad? What? You wouldn’t want me to try out for the team?” asked Benjamin.

Chloe decided to enlighten her brother. “Ben, are you dense? He doesn’t want you to get injured like he did, right Dad?” Her last boyfriend had been a senior on the varsity squad playing defensive cornerback and spent most of his time taped up like a mummy on and off the field. She found that it really impeded their ability to have good sex; his pawing at her with his hands wrapped like a pair of oversized burritos was not pleasurable.

For once, his daughter was actually bailing him out, albeit unwittingly, James thought. That was worth at least a fifty in her swear jar. “Your sister’s right, Ben. It’s a dangerous sport, a lot more dangerous than baseball. Your Papa knows what I went through.” He shot Jean-Louis a pleading look. _Please back me up on this!_ “I don’t think I could…just think about the risks, that’s all I’m saying.”

“It’s not like I’d be trying out for your position, Dad. I’d just be trying out for quarterback. You can’t get much safer than that. Besides, this is just varsity football. It’s not pro ball.”

“Getting sacked by a defensive end is no walk in the park, varsity or pro ball. And I’m sure Marcel can tell you how many times Big Ben has been injured: shoulder, knee, ankle, hand, foot, ribs, you name it. You’re only as safe as the offensive line protecting you.”

“But you always said you loved the game,” Ben accused.

“I did. I still do. But not everyone loves it.”

“Ben,” Jean-Louis said. “Your father loves you, even more than the game. That’s all.”

*** 

“Thanks, baby.” James gave Jean-Louis a tender kiss and rolled on top of him. “I didn’t think you’d take my side.” It was late but Jean-Louis smelled too good to resist, looked too much like the angel he had fallen in love with nineteen years ago.

“Does this mean you won’t push the surgery?” asked Jean-Louis.

James sighed, ready to acquiesce. “I won’t push the surgery.”

“And what if he really can’t pitch anymore?”

“Then, I don’t know, he doesn’t pitch anymore. It’s not the end of the world.”

At that, Jean-Louis pulled him closer and kissed him back. “You’ve made me happy, you crazy bastard.”

“Yeah? Now it’s your turn to make _me_ happy.” He flipped Jean-Louis over onto his stomach and took him nice and slow. After all these years, James had finally let go of the desperate urgency that had overshadowed the first half of their relationship, when each and every encounter felt like it would be their last. He wasn’t afraid of losing him anymore. Even with the infidelities, James knew that he would come back to him and the kids; they had shared too much for Jean-Louis to walk away from it all. James reached out and squeezed Jean-Louis’s hands in his own and whispered into his ear, “I’m so close, baby. Are you with me?”

Jean-Louis moaned and pressed his face into the sheets. He took a deep breath, inhaling James’s scent, and moaned again as it carried a thousand memories straight to his brain. “Almost there.” He brought James’s hand down underneath him and wrapped it around his cock. “So good, daddy. Harder, fuck me harder.” He ground his hips back against him, urging him on.

James lifted himself up on one elbow, took a handful of Jean-Louis’s hair in his hand, and raised himself forward a little, enough to angle his cock at just the right spot before quickening the pace. He gave a few tentative thrusts before he heard Jean-Louis gasp beneath him and then cry out, his whole body tensing and straining for release. “That’s it, baby, right there, I know you want it.” He stroked Jean-Louis’s erection, so hot and heavy in his hand, matching the rhythm to each snap of his hips until he felt the first spurt of wetness on his fingers and James let himself go with him, thrusting one more time before he lost himself in his own orgasm with a loud groan. He rolled them onto their sides and brought his fingers up to Jean-Louis’s mouth, let him suck on them. The sensation made James’s cock twitch and throb with feral hunger, even as he slipped out of him so he could bend over him and kiss into his mouth, taste him with a deep swipe of his tongue. “So fucking perfect,” James murmured as he bit lightly into Jean-Louis’s lower lip. “You always taste so good.” He dropped his head down and licked the rest of Jean-Louis’s chest and stomach clean, then kissed him again so he could taste himself a second time. “Hmm. Nobody tastes as good as you,” James affirmed.

“How would you know?” Jean-Louis teased. “Have you blown other guys?”

“Of course not. I don’t want to and I sure as hell don’t need to.” James reached over and caressed Jean-Louis’s smooth cheek. “You’re the only one for me. Why should I want anyone else when I already have the best? You know that.”

 


	4. Mirror, Mirror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marcel's realization unhinges Jean-Louis.

 

Marcel looked nothing like James. But he did look like the spitting image of Jean-Louis, was left-handed like him, had an uncanny ability to recollect just about everything like him. And he was bright, very, very bright. In his AP Biology class he had learned about Mendel and genes and Watson and Crick’s discovery of DNA and things started falling into place for Marcel, things he had wondered about in passing that had only grown more undeniable through time. He understood the basics about inherited traits and, coupled with what he had learned in his AP History class, he also knew about incest, quite popular in ancient Egyptian times apparently, as well as in Old World Europe. Marcel had seen his birth certificate in a file in James’s office, had known that a father had never been named on it, knew that James wasn’t an accidental sperm donor like he had been with his older half-siblings; he had seen the documents awarding James legal guardianship of him after his mother’s death, and then the formal adoption papers. Simply put, Marcel knew that James wasn’t his biological father and James had told him as much, and he knew for a certainty that his mother had been Jean-Louis’s sister and that his Papa had loved her dearly. That was all well and good, except for the way his Papa would look at him, like a man in prison staring out at the sky through a barred window. 

Children only do what comes naturally to them unless they are taught or forced otherwise, and for Marcel that meant that he would always go to James for comfort if he were tired or hungry or upset. Dad was _it_ for him—a rock, a mountain, an immovable haven—and nothing made him feel happier or more invincible than to be hoisted onto his shoulders or swung up in the air, or more secure than to be held close to his chest, his huge arms around him to be carried to bed when he was too sleepy to walk up the stairs. His Papa was always more reticent, more an observer than an active participant and the older Marcel got, the more he noticed the way Jean-Louis held himself back. He could see the hesitation in him and what seemed like estrangement almost. 

“Papa, are you sad?” Marcel would ask him from time to time. 

Jean-Louis would always smile and say in return, “There is nothing to be sad about.” Then he’d take another hit on his joint as if he wanted to smoke away all the cares of the world. 

One day Marcel just came out with it. He and Jean-Louis were alone in the car waiting for Chloe to finish chatting up some boy after her soccer practice when Marcel turned to him in the front seat and said point-blank, “You’re my father, aren’t you? My biological father.”

Jean-Louis just stared at Marcel, cold sweat breaking out all over his body just as he knew it would when that dreaded moment came. He heard himself breathing, then breathing loudly, his heart pounding in his chest like a jackhammer. He couldn’t speak, could only turn his head away finally and gaze blindly out the windshield and hope that he could salvage something from what would definitely be the worst car wreck ever.

“Marcel…” Incoherent thoughts died in Jean-Louis’s throat. He didn’t know what to say even though he had rehearsed his excuses for years now. The guilt, though…he couldn’t get past it.

“It’s okay, Papa. I don’t hate you. I just want to know one thing: why?”

“Mon dieu.” Jean-Louis started sobbing. Why? He couldn’t tell him why, could he? How could he tell his own child all the monstrous, damnable things he had done in stupidity and selfishness? It was all so wrong, but he had done it—made love to his own sister—and done it willingly, eagerly, repeatedly in the most shameless ways. And now his precious, innocent son would know his sin, his terrible sin, the sin for which he refused to repent because it had given him his only true and lasting joy in life, and his deepest sorrow. He didn’t regret it, didn’t wish it had never happened, the fact that he had done those things with Charlotte; no, he only regretted that she was gone from him and would never come back. 

He felt Marcel put a hand on his arm, just like a consoling adult would and not as an eleven-year-old child. Jean-Louis forced himself to control his panic and after a few more pathetic gulps of air, he wiped his face and tried to steady his voice. The explanation he had prepared himself to give mercifully came to mind. 

“Your mother knew you would save me.” Indeed, it was the third transplant that had kept the lymphoma at bay, the fetal stem cells that had been harvested from the placenta and umbilical cord at Marcel’s birth that had bought Jean-Louis a reprieve from his death sentence. Charlotte hadn’t lived to see the miracle, but she had made it happen. “Your mother gave me everything…her life…my life…you.”

“You loved her.” It was more a statement than a question.

“More than anything in the world.”

“Okay.”

Marcel always said “okay.” Not “no” or even “yes.” Just “okay” whether he meant anything else. He had found that the word “okay” held universal appeal; it had a way of making everything alright no matter the circumstances, sort of like an all purpose band-aid or magic potion that instantly ridded one of pain or anger or sadness.

“I’m so sorry, Marcel. I shouldn’t have let her care more for me than her own life.”

“But then I wouldn’t be here, would I?”

Jean-Louis looked at his son, sitting calmly beside him while he fell apart like an idiot. “No, you wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t either.”

“Then it was the right thing, don’t you think? I don’t regret it, and you shouldn’t either.” Marcel furrowed his brow in deep contemplation. “Does Dad know?”

“Yes.”

“What about Ben and Chloe?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“Do you want them to know?”

“Nah. It’ll be our secret. You, me, and Dad.” 

***  

After the trip to Disney World, something inside Jean-Louis broke apart, imperceptibly at first, and then like a dam bursting, the waters rising over the banks in a torrent and obliterating everything in its raging path of muddy destruction. It was the tenth anniversary of his sister’s suicide and Jean-Louis fell into a deep depression. The confrontation with Marcel had unlocked his grief and he was no longer able to turn away from the reality of Charlotte’s death. And it was terrible. He awoke at night breathless and in a panic, as if a great weight had been pressing against his chest and crushing his lungs, his heart, until he thought he should finally die and be with her once more. For years he had refused to mourn, had stubbornly denied the loss of her, his half, his soul, the one who could make him complete. She was gone from him and it had all been his fault and the only way he could go on was to face the other way, always the other way. But Marcel had uncovered the truth, forced it upon Jean-Louis like a mirror reflecting his guilt and Jean-Louis couldn’t escape the guilt, the truth. He couldn’t stand the sight of James, of the children even, and it filled him with remorse and shame. He went through the motions from habit alone, was unaware of himself except for the pain of life.

“What’s wrong?” James asked. “What’s happened?”

Jean-Louis was at the stove making crepes for the kids on a Saturday morning. He stirred the batter and then poured it into the skillet and wondered why he couldn’t see straight. He was sobbing and didn’t even know it. “Let me go,” he told James. He turned to him and let James embrace him. “I’m dying. Let me go. Let me go.”

Marcel came into the kitchen and saw, he heard, and knew his Papa was lost in darkness. After breakfast, he helped James load the dishwasher. Jean-Louis had gone for a hike on the trails with Benjamin and Chloe.

“I told him,” Marcel said. “That’s what’s wrong with Papa.”

“What are you talking about?” asked James. “What did you tell him?”

“I told him I knew. I know he’s my father, and I told him.” Marcel burst into tears. “And now he wants to die.”

“Oh.” James was stunned, and then he clutched Marcel to his chest. “Mon fils.” _My son_. “Don’t worry, little man. I won’t let him die.”

But Jean-Louis withdrew further and further into himself, into misery. He struggled to find his way through the maze of sorrow only to be confronted with one dead end after another. It drove him mad. Neither drink nor drugs provided respite from his anguish.

“I have to leave or die,” he told Kerrie one day over coffee. “I can’t go on like this. I’m no good to James or the kids.”

“Make your peace with the dead,” Kerrie said. “Then come back to the living.”

He took a leave of absence from his work. Then he called his mother. “I’m coming home,” he told Catherine. “Please don’t turn me away.”

“Come,” his mother told him.

That night he made love with James. He had not let him touch him for weeks and James had left him to his own. James loved him too much to demand what was owed to him. Afterwards, Jean-Louis said, “I’m going away. Don’t stop me. Let me go and I’ll come back to you.”

James wept, enraged and helpless, and then said with resignation, “Promise.”

“Je promets.” _I promise_. “When I’m ready, I’ll come home.”

“How will I know when you’re ready?” asked James.

“Je ne sais pas.” _I don’t know_. “You’ve always had your way with me,” Jean-Louis said bitterly, “and now, I’m so...I have to fix it. If I can’t, then you’ll have to do it for me.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes with exhaustion. “You’ll make it all right, won’t you? You’ll put it all back together again?”

“Yeah.” James held him close, kissed his wet cheeks and ached with dread. “I’ll put everything back together, you and me. We’ve died before, haven’t we? We’ve both come back from the other side.”

And so James let him go. The children didn’t question it. They had known all along their Papa would leave some day. That he would come back to them they didn’t doubt. His absence was something they made their minds up to endure. It was like waiting for Christmas to come around again. It would come, no matter how interminable the wait.

In early August Jean-Louis left Denver and flew to Edinburgh to visit his friend Oliver Williams, who had set up house with his adoptive mother, Enid, and a lover twenty years his junior, a journalist named Angus McIntyre. They lived in a modern twelve-story apartment building just outside of “downtown” Edinburgh that catered to young families and couples. Oliver was not happy with Jean-Louis’s current state of affairs. The four of them—Oliver, Angus, Enid, and Jean-Louis—had gone out for a nice dinner at a local pub and then returned to the apartment for more drinks and talk. At midnight, Angus and Enid retired to sleep and left Oliver alone with Jean-Louis. The two were old friends and lovers and Oliver could sense that Jean-Louis was lost.

“Nothing has changed,” Oliver told Jean-Louis. They sat in the living room smoking cigarettes and polishing off another bottle of wine. “You’re still exactly in the same corner.”

Jean-Louis gazed at his friend, now in his forties, still trim and handsome, with grey in his chestnut brown hair. “No. In some ways I’m better. In some ways worse.” He told Oliver the truth about Marcel, the truth about his relationship with Charlotte.

Oliver sat silent for a moment, and then took a leisurely drag on his cigarette. “And this is what’s killing you? That you and your sister were lovers and that Marcel is your child with her? Half of England, half of Europe, half of humanity could say the same if anyone were honest.” He paused, and then went on, “Well, maybe not half. Regardless…what you’ve done is no more or less than what your biblical Cain did with God’s sanction, so get over it. My dear boy, you’re still wallowing in grief, but you’re no closer to satisfaction. If you’re so broken about what you’ve done, then talk to your sister. She was there, after all. Talk to her and be done with it. Life is too short to be sad. Don’t keep suffering.”

When he finally returned to his family estate in Arbois, his mother gave him his brother Ernst’s old room to stay in. Jean-Louis’s old bedroom, the room in which Charlotte had died, was kept emptied and closed up. His brother Paul came to see him as he was settling in.

“Mama says you’ll be staying awhile.” Paul stood in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest and his feet set wide apart. He was still as imposing as ever.

Jean-Louis turned to face him from the closet where he was hanging up his shirts. “Yes. I want to see Charlotte’s grave. And Papa’s, too.”

Paul grunted and stared down at his feet, then strode into the room and leaned against the desk under the window. “Have you left him, then?” he asked with a scowl. He assumed that Jean-Louis had finally made an irrevocable mess of his life with James and the kids, something that should have never happened in the first place.

Jean-Louis continued unpacking his suitcase, robotically putting socks and underwear into the dresser. “No. I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

“Hmph.” Paul glared at him, less with anger than disappointment. His youngest brother was gifted and yet he had been an imbecile in life. He had wasted everything that had been given to him and for what? To come crawling back to their mother with nothing to show for? “I tried to help you, you know. I tried to teach you, but you would never listen, never learn. You had to go your own way, like a fool.” Paul pitied him. He could see that Jean-Louis was at an end, was suffering and though he was home, he was homeless. Paul had a wife, children, purpose, joy in living. He had friends, his brother Ernst with whom he had always been close, an uncle who was a father to him. Jean-Louis had only had Charlotte, someone equally wayward and damned, and the love of an equally dead father. “If you’re going to stay, then help with the harvest,” Paul told him. “It’ll give you something to do. Besides, you should earn your keep.”

Jean-Louis sat on the bed, nodded to his brother. “Yes. You’re right.” His brain was stuck on pause and he was grateful that Paul was ordering him about, telling him what to do. What had happened to him? He felt as a child again, a leaf tossed about in the storm, directionless. He wanted to fall on his knees in front of Paul, beg him to take his life into his hands and show him the way. He was so utterly lost. But all he could say was, “You’ve always been right.”

He called James each day at four-thirty in the morning Denver time so he wouldn’t worry. The sound of James’s voice just woken from sleep was both soothing and heartbreaking.

“Hey, baby. Are you alright?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m fine.” Jean-Louis wiped the curved blade onto his leather apron and looked down the valley. It was a cool day and cloudy. The work would go quickly. “How are the kids?”

“They’re great. Chloe’s got a new boyfriend.” James sat up in bed and sighed. “She goes through them like you go through wine.”

At that Jean-Louis laughed. “Don’t be upset, James. You only need to worry when she decides to keep one.”

There was a long silence, and then James said, “I miss you. I miss you so much I could die. Tell me you’ll come home.”

“James. It’s only been three months.”

“I know. But it feels like forever.”

“It won’t be forever. I need to do this. Don’t rush me.” The truth was, he couldn't see himself going back to Denver. He had visited Charlotte’s 'grave' in the vineyard on his birthday, _their_ birthday. He had cut off his hair so that he could lay the golden strands on the ground by the vine under which her ashes had been strewn. The ashes were long gone, but his love for her was still there burning a hole in his chest, and he had felt so very close to her, as if she hadn't really left him. Then he had gone to visit his father’s grave in the churchyard. He lit a candle and said prayers for both his father and his sister in their parish church, though neither one of them had believed in God. He didn’t believe in God either, but he needed God all the same, just to give him false hope. James had the children and the children had James to care for them. Jean-Louis had only the dead to keep him alive.

 

 


	5. Old Wounds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean-Louis escapes to Arbois, but there is no reconciling the past.

 

Jean-Louis had awoken early and been unable to fall back to sleep, so he got up and went into the kitchen to make coffee. The house was dark, his Uncle Auguste and his mother still in their room upstairs. The harvest was over. It was November now and he no longer had much to do beyond making bread and feeding the chickens. His nieces and nephews were beginning to look at him strangely, probably wondering why he was staying away so long from his own family. Didn’t he miss them? Did he?

He filled the water kettle and set it on the stove to boil. James had called him the other day and he had been irate. 

“The holidays are coming up, Jean-Louis,” James had reminded him. He had called him by his name instead of saying his usual ‘baby’ and that meant James was down to the dregs in his barrel of patience. “Haven’t you been gone long enough? I mean, for fuck’s sake. What do you want me to do? Mom and Dad are flying out. So are Ted and Meredith and the kids. What am I supposed to say to them? What am I supposed to say to our own goddamn kids if you’re not here for Thanksgiving? Do I have to go over there and drag your ass home?” 

Jean-Louis had listened mutely and felt only a small twinge of annoyance. The rest of him couldn’t care less. He was numb and wanted to stay that way. Now he pictured them in his mind’s eye: James, Benjamin, Chloe, Marcel. Who were they? Why had he ever been with them in the first place? He stood at the stove, the gas flame hissing softly, and let his thoughts carry him ten years back, back to the ‘why’ of things. 

He had returned to Denver to retrieve his son, Charlotte’s son, Marcel. At the time, it had given him solace and purpose. If he could get back their child, he could rewrite the past; Charlotte wouldn’t be completely lost to him. He could still recapture what the two of them had shared, a bond so sacred and profane and beautiful, the only thing that had given shape and sense to his world. But when he had done the deed—given James everything by marrying him and bartering his own soul in exchange for Marcel—he discovered that the boy was already James’s son and not his own. Marcel wasn’t his and never would be. Over the years Jean-Louis had bided his time and hoped and loved the boy for Charlotte’s sake, but every time he had watched Marcel go to James and ask to be held it had felt like a knife in his heart. He could only stand back and let the boy choose freely. And Marcel would always choose James. 

Did he hate James for it? How could he? It wasn’t even James’s fault. Jean-Louis had been ill when Marcel was conceived, newly diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma and unaware of Charlotte’s unholy plan to save him. She had succeeded but lost her own life in saving his. Jean-Louis was left with a son who was in the care of his former lover in America, out of his grasp. When he had told his mother he was going to Denver to retrieve Marcel she had scoffed at the idea. 

“Why open old wounds? Haven’t we all suffered enough? Charlotte is dead and not in any position to enjoy your foolish heroics. It’s too late for that.” Catherine had stared across the kitchen table at Jean-Louis and taken another drag on her cigarette. She had just celebrated her fifty-fifth birthday with a trip to the Amalfi coast and was tanned and relaxed, her natural blond hair bleached into white gold. 

It had been a morning not unlike this one, not yet five-thirty; she had been an early riser her whole life. Jean-Louis was home after a year of rehabilitation in Zürich, where he had been staying in their family-owned apartment near the Hauptbahnhof while he worked towards physical and mental recovery after his months long coma. Jean-Louis’s brother Ernst, though, had landed a prime position at Moët & Chandon as one of their marketing executives for the entire region and was relocating his wife and three children to Zürich, where he would have his office and team of junior managers. When Ernst and his family took over the apartment in Zürich, it had forced Jean-Louis back home to his mother’s estate and vineyard in Arbois. 

His mother had given Jean-Louis Ernst’s old room to use, which was little changed from when they were children: it had the same single bed, nightstand and dresser and a wall-mounted display case with all the Citroën car models his brother had collected as a teenager. Ernst had let Jean-Louis play with them when he was small until he broke the side mirror off the DS 21 by accident. For that, Jean-Louis had received a swift punch in the gut and an earful of expletives and was banished from Ernst’s room. If it had been his eldest brother Paul whom he had upset, he would have been eviscerated. Jean-Louis’s own room had been emptied and shut up after Charlotte’s death. She had died in his room, opened her wrists and bled to death on his bed. Each time he walked by the closed door a tremor would pass through his body. It wasn’t fear. It was the complete absence of her making itself known, a reminder of how far away she was from him and how far he’d have to go to get back to her, if she would have him. 

He had been sleeping at odd hours due to the cocktail of medications prescribed by his therapist and it had explained the fact that he was already up and sitting in the kitchen when his mother had come downstairs. He was normally a late riser, a habit that always irritated the rest of his family who saw it as a lack of discipline, a mark of self-indulgence. Catherine was enjoying this rare moment alone with him, even if it was just to reprimand him, before the clutter of the day ensued. “Did you sleep well?” she had asked. 

“As well as usual.” Jean-Louis had sat slumped in the chair, his disheveled hair almost chin length, wearing an old Chelsea football jersey given to him by his godfather Henry Wallace years ago for Christmas. He was unshaven and bleary eyed. Catherine blamed his uncharacteristically unkempt appearance on the medications. They made him at turns manic and exhausted, but he hadn’t stepped in front of a train or jumped off a cliff, so she assumed the drugs were working. Jean-Louis had looked down at his hands, which he held flattened against the table, and wondered why he couldn’t remember dreaming, and then said abruptly, “You haven’t eaten yet, Mama. I’ll make you breakfast.” 

Catherine had watched him prepare an omelet for her like someone sleepwalking. He was awake but not aware of what he was actually doing. He did it all by rote and he did it supremely well with grace and efficiency. “You’ll have some too?” Catherine had asked when he placed the dish in front of her. The omelet was a pillow of silken softness, light and delicate in texture and perfectly seasoned. 

He had poured both of them some coffee mixed with hot cream and took the seat next to her. “No. I’m not hungry.” Then he had silently downed half his cup, his mind thick and opaque like the coffee. “I’m going to do it,” he had declared somberly. “I’m going to bring Marcel back home.” 

Catherine had raised an eyebrow. “Even if I don’t approve?” 

“Why don’t you approve?” had been Jean-Louis’s retort, too quick and with a sharp edge full of rancor. “Don’t you want your own grandchild back?” He had stared into his cup, furious and hurt. There was a moment of helpless regret, and then he had moaned like a child who would not be comforted, “Why didn’t you refuse? Why did you go along with it?” 

“It was what Charlotte wanted. It was in her will.” Catherine had put her fork down and squared her shoulders. Her son was going to throw a fit and she was ready for it. She had looked the other way for so long because she loved her children dearly. Her twins had committed abominable acts in the eyes of God and both had been punished, but she wasn’t going to tolerate Jean-Louis’s insolence any longer. It had broken her heart to give Marcel over to that beastly man after enduring the loss of her only daughter and the ongoing trauma of Jean-Louis’s illness, and she was in no mood to justify her actions, not when she had done it to protect Marcel from the wrath of her other sons. 

“And that was enough for you?” Jean-Louis had accused bitterly. “ _It was in her will_? You gave Marcel away. You gave him to James…after you hated him…you all hated him. You could have told James the truth—that I wasn't fucking _dead_ —and then Marcel would still be here instead of with him.” 

“How dare you? You think you have the right to blame me? And what is the truth, Jean-Louis? Tell me. Tell me what _you’ve_ done. You tell me who Marcel is and I’ll tell you why he is safer with that imbecile in America.” She had held his gaze with steely conviction. She knew she was right. “What I have accepted as your mother is appalling.” Catherine had reached out and grasped Jean-Louis’s hand. “But your brother Paul would never accept what you’ve done. You mustn’t flaunt it in his face. I won’t allow it.” 

As an infant, Marcel had been so like Jean-Louis, both in appearance and demeanor, that Catherine had suspected the worst. Jean-Louis’s deteriorating health had been an easy distraction, an excuse not to ask the shameful question; otherwise, the horror of it would have consumed her. And Paul...he had beaten Jean-Louis for far lesser sins in the past. She couldn't even imagine what her eldest son would have done to her youngest if he ever realized the truth about Marcel. He probably would have shot both of them dead on the spot. “He’s safer there, Jean-Louis. If you love Marcel, let him go, forget him. Forget that man.” 

James! “Oh, God.” Jean-Louis had covered his face with both hands and wept with despair, humiliation. “Oh, Mama. I’ve made such a terrible mess of things. I never meant to fuck it all up…Charlotte…Marcel…everything…I don’t know how to fix it.”

“Yes, you’ve been quite a disaster, haven’t you?” She had wiped tenderly at his face with her napkin. “My little lost boy. You’ve always gone your own way…from the very beginning. And you’ve always chosen unwisely. Why is that? Hmm?” Her youngest was twenty-seven at the time, a grown man yet he was still stuck somewhere in childhood and unable to move forward, as if he had suffered some devastating injury that left him stunted and maimed for the remainder of his life. And each bad decision made since had only cemented him further in place. 

“What’s this all for?” he had asked. “Why go on?” He had looked into her eyes, so brilliant and blue, and recalled with absolute clarity a day in which he had watched his mother and grandmother making bread at the kitchen table while he sat in his father’s lap with his sister held next to him. He could feel the warmth of his father’s chest against his side and the smell of tobacco on his father’s face each time his father kissed his cheek. He must have been four or five at the time and he couldn’t remember ever feeling happier. When his two older brothers ran through the kitchen brandishing sticks they had carved into spears, his father had squeezed him and his sister tightly in his arms and shouted to Paul and Ernst, “Away, wild beasts! These tasty morsels are mine!” and he and Charlotte had both screamed with laughter as his father made to gobble them up before his brothers could do the same. But that day was long gone and perhaps the whole of his wayward yearning had been a futile attempt to grasp a memory, that feeling of joy and safety, the firmness of his father’s body shielding him from his brothers, the smell and sound of him, the sheer beauty and fierce love of his sister, to have it all once more. 

But nothing he had done going forward had brought him back to that cherished place. His father and sister were both dead—the two people who had loved him best—and his own ignorant sojourn into fatherhood and his misguided attempt to fix what had been broken inside him—by claiming Marcel as a means of salvation—had been a failure. He had been absent, too sick when Marcel was an infant, and then gone altogether during the crucial stages of Marcel’s early childhood. He hadn’t been there for Marcel’s first words, his first steps, his first anything. He had been too late and nothing would change that now. Instead it was James who had cared for Marcel while Jean-Louis was in a coma and then too weak and insane to do more than breathe like a barely living corpse for the year after. James had done everything right by Marcel. He had earned the boy’s love and Jean-Louis could only be grateful on top of all the bitterness and sense of betrayal. He had no right to resent James for being the hero, but where did that leave him? 

“Go home.” 

Jean-Louis turned to see his mother standing in the doorway. Her hair was down and still luxuriant, silvery blond and falling in waves around her finely boned face. She was in her gown and robe and slippers and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. She took a seat at the table and sighed. 

“There was a time when you wouldn’t come home to me,” Catherine said quietly. “No matter how many times I asked you, you wouldn’t come home to stay. And now you don’t want to go home to…that man.” 

That forced a laugh from Jean-Louis and he couldn’t resist pushing back. “You still can’t stand to say his name, after all this time.” 

“I can say his name just fine,” Catherine declared. “I call him by his name when he’s here, don’t I?” 

The shrill whistle from the water kettle silenced both of them. He made the coffee and brought it to the table. “You’re sick of me already?” Jean-Louis asked. “You’re the one who wanted me to stay.” 

“That was before you decided to marry that gorilla. Of all the stupid things a boy can do!” She took an angry sip of her coffee and burned her mouth. “Shit.” 

“It’s been almost ten years and you’re still pissed off about that?” 

“And you aren’t? It’s why you’re here now, isn’t it? You did a foolish thing and now you think you can run and hide from it. Well, I didn’t approve of it when you did it and I don’t approve of what you’re doing now either.” Jean-Louis had been recalcitrant in his youth and she had never punished him for it; her husband had loved and favored him so. And though she had suspected all along what Jean-Louis and Charlotte were doing, she had never confronted them, never tried to stop them. She had loved them too much to deny them what they wanted. Did that make her a bad mother? Was her son’s negligence as an adult something she had taught him? Even if she were in the wrong, she still had her pride to protect and she still had the power to put him in his place. “Maybe you should think of those children.” 

“As if you ever did!” Jean-Louis clamped a hand over his mouth. This was like déjà vu and it was bad enough the first time around. His mother had never accepted Benjamin and Chloe because of James and Marcel was just a source of unspeakable shame for Catherine, but Jean-Louis had behaved no better himself. He knew he wasn’t a good father to the kids. Well, he was pretty awful, if he were honest about it. James had always been the disciplinarian, the one setting the boundaries and enforcing the rules and routines. Jean-Louis had merely watched from the sidelines or carried on irresponsibly. Weren’t they better off without him? “Alright. You’re right, Mama. I made a mistake. Too many to make right.” He shook his head at his own impotence. At least he was still capable at work. He had always been good at work. But in his life choices he had been an idiot. 

Catherine reached out and patted his hand. “You and me,” she smiled faintly. She was old now, in her sixties, but she had lived a wild life in her own youth and adulthood. Though her two older sons had made her proud with their successes, it was her younger twins who had taken after her in deed and temperament. “We’ve both made mistakes. But I’m still here, Jean-Louis, and I’m happy. One day you’ll be happy, too.” 

Later that morning, Jean-Louis texted James: _I’ll be home for Thanksgiving. I still love you._

 

 


	6. What is Lost, What is Gained

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean-Louis returns to Denver and finds a new connection with Marcel. And enjoys sexy times with James.

 

Jean-Louis had cleared customs almost fifteen minutes ago and texted James to wait for him at baggage claim. The flight had arrived on schedule at Denver International Airport and James was anxiously scanning the growing crowd of people milling around carousel number twelve when he felt a tap on his shoulder. James turned and his jaw dropped. 

“What the fuck did you do to your hair?” James cried out in dismay. 

“Well, hello to you, too,” replied Jean-Louis. 

He had flown in from Heathrow, having spent the past week visiting with his godfather, Henry Wallace, who was now on medical leave from his curatorial position at the Natural History Museum in London. Henry had suffered a stroke two months ago. His left side was partially paralyzed but he was getting around in a wheelchair, still able to feed, bathe, and dress himself with help from his wife Joan. He was the closest thing Jean-Louis had to a surrogate father, much more so than his own Uncle Auguste, his deceased father’s older brother and the man who had taken his father Charles’s place in his mother’s bed. Henry had mentored Jean-Louis through his doctoral studies at Cambridge and had tried, at the urging of Catherine, to keep an eye on him, to keep him in line somehow. He was still trying. 

“They haven’t decided on a permanent replacement for me yet,” Henry told him. “You know the position can be yours if you want it. Just say the word and I’ll let them know you’re interested. I’m on the search committee and I have final say more or less.” The conversation was oddly familiar. Well, of course it was. Was it twelve or thirteen years ago that Henry had offered Jean-Louis a position on his team of curators? Jean-Louis had turned the offer down then because of James, who had suffered a debilitating injury playing football. Jean-Louis had gone to Denver to be with James instead of moving to London to work with Henry and now Henry wondered if he was going to get the same answer. 

The idea of going back to museum work was genuinely tempting to Jean-Louis—less lucrative than working in the private sector as he did now—but tempting nevertheless. He had spent his early career working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and he had enjoyed it immensely. “It would be wonderful to stay here in London,” Jean-Louis admitted freely. “There’s so much more culture. Denver is beautiful, and the Rockies are truly spectacular, but there’s not much else beyond football and skiing and snowboarding. If it weren’t for the pot...anyway, James would never agree to move out of the States.” 

“You could ask him, couldn’t you?” Henry knew well enough about the difficult nature of Jean-Louis’s relationship with James, all the conflict between them. He had only met James twice—at their wedding and several years later when Jean-Louis had been in London for a conference held by the Geological Society—and found James to be overbearing and misinformed in that quintessentially American way. Jean-Louis's initial hook-up with James was something that should have remained a one night stand in Henry’s opinion, but it hadn’t; it had kept on going like an out-of-control car that was still careening without brakes to this very day. “It wouldn’t hurt to ask him, would it?” 

They were eating a simple dinner of shepherd’s pie that Joan had made and drinking a very good Irish stout. Jean-Louis rarely drank beer or ale in the States, but whenever he was in London, beer or ale is all he drank. 

“Oh, Henry, don’t cause trouble,” Joan said. She had given up stage acting completely to care for her husband and was finding it a challenge to keep her patience now that she was serving as a full-time nurse. “Not everyone can just pick up and start all over again somewhere else, not with children and spouses involved.” She nodded at Jean-Louis, as if to say, “Aren’t husbands such pains in the ass?” 

“If I came to London to work, I would come alone,” Jean-Louis thought. Then he looked up from his plate and saw Henry and Joan gazing at him in expectation and he realized he had said it aloud. He cleared his throat and murmured, “I mean…it would probably be the end of it.” He didn’t say what “it” was, but his two hosts knew that “it” meant his marriage to James. He caught Joan and Henry exchanging hopeful glances. 

“Ah, well then,” Joan concluded cheerfully, “that’s that.” 

Jean-Louis had been unable to sleep the entire flight home, nor eat; the closer he got to Denver, the more he wished he could turn the plane around. Perhaps he could broach the subject with James. If James wouldn’t agree to a move, then Jean-Louis could still leave. He could leave after the New Year, make a clean start, but how could he manage it without James killing him first? He was still pondering this when he found James at baggage claim futilely glancing about the cavernous space. Jean-Louis had completely forgotten that his hair was now short; he had cut it three months ago and had it trimmed two times since and thought nothing of it. James, though, was clearly furious. 

“I cut it,” Jean-Louis explained calmly. He was grateful to be exhausted, too exhausted to be angry right back. “I cut it for Charlotte.” He looked at James and his disgruntled expression and then said softly, “To say goodbye to her, James, to let her go. I know you liked my hair long, but I never grew it for you. You know that, don’t you? I only grew it for her. And now it’s gone. My hair, I cut it and left it on Charlotte’s grave. I cut her out of my heart. I’m trying to at least. Are you happy now?” Jean-Louis was so tired and his eyes were burning and when James reached out and pulled him into a tight embrace, he sighed with relief. “I’m ready to go home.” 

James waited until they were in the parking garage before he turned to Jean-Louis and kissed him. “I’m sorry about that back there,” James told him as he caressed Jean-Louis’s cheek and ran his fingers through his hair. “It was just the shock of it, you know? You didn’t tell me that you were going to cut it all off. I’m sorry, I really am.” James pulled him close and kissed him again, sucking and licking into his mouth, his arms squeezing around him tightly. “I’ve missed you so much, baby. I’m so glad you’re back.” 

“So, what do you think?” asked Jean-Louis, suddenly feeling self-conscious. He had had it cut long and layered on top and short on the sides and back. 

James held him away by the shoulders and stared intently. Even under the horrid fluorescent lights of the parking garage, Jean-Louis was still stunningly beautiful: the fine bones of his face, the arrow-straight nose, those blue eyes the color of the summer sky, that mouth that bordered on the obscene, all of it framed by his honey-gold hair which was falling in front of his eyes to one side. James pushed the silky strands out of the way and kissed his smooth forehead. For a split second, James saw Jean-Louis as he had been when he was so deathly ill—gaunt and grey and one step away from the grave—and his heart seized with panic and regret. God, how he loved him! His beautiful Jean-Louis, his exterminating angel, the one who tore his guts out and made him feel that life was so worth living no matter the agony. “It’s different. I’ll have to get used to it but, yeah, it looks good on you. A fucking mop on your head would look good on you.” 

He kissed Jean-Louis again and closed the trunk after putting in the luggage and bags. The radio—tuned to one of the college stations—blared loudly when he turned on the ignition. The first churning riffs of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” was just starting up as James pulled out of the parking space. “Fucking hell,” he muttered. He drove down one level, tires squealing, and then abruptly pulled into the first open spot he could find, parked, and turned the ignition off. “Get into the back seat,” he told Jean-Louis. When Jean-Louis just sat in confusion, he barked, “Now!” 

James already had his cock out by the time Jean-Louis let himself into the back. “What are you doing?” Jean-Louis asked with no little trepidation. He glanced around quickly to see if anyone was walking by. 

“What does it look like?” James had left the radio on and Robert Plant was yowling like a cat in heat and, goddamn it, what living human could resist the sound of _that_? “Come here, baby. Come to daddy.” James unbuckled Jean-Louis’s belt and had his trousers and briefs yanked down his hips in record time. He shoved him onto all fours in front of him and then James spit into his hand and slicked his cock with it. 

“What the fuck?” Jean-Louis protested, turning his head when he _heard_ rather than _saw_ what James had in mind. “I can’t do this! James! Don’t! I can’t do this without—” 

“Spit is lube, baby. And you’re no virgin.” James gripped Jean-Louis’s hip firmly in one hand and spit and wiped again with the other, this time fingering Jean-Louis’s unprepared hole for a fleeting moment before he pushed in. “And I haven’t drilled you in way too long.” 

“Ah!” Jean-Louis gasped as James breached him roughly. “Enculé!” _Motherfucker!_  

Well, it didn’t take much—three minutes at the most—and in that short time span, to the glorious sounds of Robert Plant keening and Jimmy Page masturbating his guitar like he was stroking his own cock, James managed to cum hard and give Jean-Louis both an orgasm and a serious bruise on his temple after knocking Jean-Louis’s head against the side window one too many times. Jean-Louis was beside himself, trembling from food, sleep, and weed deprivation and now sore as hell and reeking of James and his own cum which had splattered all over his shirt and was dripping onto the seat beneath him. “I-I need a tissue,” Jean-Louis muttered weakly. His ass was on fire, like it had been ripped to shreds, and he felt like crying. But he also felt blissed out and devoid of worries. No one wrecked him like James. James, who always gave him just what he needed most, when he needed it most. 

James pulled out of him and grabbed the box of Kleenex off of the floor, took a handful for himself and another handful for Jean-Louis. “Here,” James panted as he passed the tissues over to Jean-Louis and then blindly wiped himself clean. “I’ll bang you good and long when we get home,” he promised. James wasn’t the kind of man to break a promise, either, and Jean-Louis knew it. 

“You’re really mad at me, aren’t you?” Jean-Louis dabbed at himself, grimacing, and then gave up and slumped against the seat. He knew he looked like a hot mess and he needed a shower and a shave to fix it. He removed the wad of tissues wedged between his cheeks and gingerly pulled his pants back up and tucked in his shirt, fastened his belt, and hoped the kids wouldn’t notice how badly he’d been manhandled. 

James grunted and pulled up his own pants. “I _was_ mad, but I’m not anymore, now that you’re here…” He leaned over and kissed Jean-Louis, slow and soft. “Don’t do this to me again, baby. Don’t keep breaking my heart.” 

*** 

The kids were waiting at the door even though it was nearly eleven on a school night when they finally made it home. When the car pulled into the drive, they ran out and swarmed Jean-Louis as soon as he got out of the SUV. 

“Papa! Papa!” they cried excitedly. “You’re home! Did you bring us anything?” 

Jean-Louis laughed and kissed them in turn and then kissed them again. “Bien sûr! Lots of goodies for my darlings.” 

“Tomorrow,” James said. “Papa and I are going to bed and I don’t want to hear a peep from you three.” 

Marcel ignored James’s directive and insisted, “But I was going to make Papa something to eat.” He knew his Papa hated airline food. Marcel turned to Jean-Louis. “Are you hungry, Papa? I’ve been practicing.” 

The mention of food made Jean-Louis’s stomach growl with hunger. He hadn’t eaten in over eighteen hours and he realized he was starving. “Yes! Yes, I’m hungry. What will you make me?” Jean-Louis asked as they walked into the house. 

“Scrambled eggs,” Marcel declared proudly. 

At that, Jean-Louis’s face froze into something noncommittal. The proper cooking of scrambled eggs was a huge bone of contention in the household. Jean-Louis cooked it the French way, the proper way, while James cooked the living shit out of the eggs, cooked them until they were pieces of yellow rubber. And the kids actually liked it that way to Jean-Louis’s great chagrin, having known nothing better for the first few years of their lives. James was smugly proud of the fact that the kids preferred his scrambled eggs over Jean-Louis’s, which they considered to be unnaturally soft and which James considered to be “un-American” like everything Jean-Louis cooked. 

But Marcel was already at the stove, melting the butter in the pan and beating the eggs with a fork in a bowl. He was so serious and determined that Jean-Louis could only sit quietly and bite his tongue. James had taken his bags to their room and was going to shower; he had made Benjamin and Chloe go upstairs with him to give Jean-Louis time alone with Marcel. Marcel had blamed himself for his Papa leaving and Jean-Louis’s absence had hurt Marcel the most. Benjamin and Chloe had wanted to ask Jean-Louis all sorts of questions, but that would have to wait for the next day; it was only fair to let Marcel have first dibs on reconciliation. 

In a few minutes, Marcel brought him the plated eggs, a wide smile on his sweet face. He had made them French-style, not James-style. They were barely cooked, still glistening from the butter added at the end, and when Jean-Louis tasted the first bite, they were exactly as they should be: melt-in-the-mouth tender, airy, with a texture as soft as silk. 

“Mon fils,” Jean-Louis murmured. He hugged Marcel to him and wept without shame. “Mon fils précieux.” _My precious son_. In that moment, the anguish fell away, his and Marcel’s. He swept Marcel up onto his lap, still crying, joyful, so joyful. To hold his son the way his own father had held him all those years ago... “Will you forgive me? Will you accept my love?” That is what Jean-Louis wanted to say, but instead he asked, “Will you eat with me?” 

Marcel nodded and opened his mouth like a baby bird and Jean-Louis fed him a forkful of scrambled eggs. “Now tell me, mon petit chéri, which way is better? My way or Daddy’s way?” 

Marcel chewed, swallowed, and giggled, abashed. “Daddy’s way.” 

And Jean-Louis laughed. “Well, then. Daddy’s way it is.” Nothing could take away his happiness. Marcel was James’s son, but he was his, too, at last. He only had to let him in. 

*** 

When he went up to their bedroom, he noticed that James had already emptied both his luggage and carry-on bag and was sorting his clothes into the hampers in their walk-in closet. The bathroom was still steamy from the shower James had taken. 

“Better lock the door,” James called out, “’cause we’re getting busy ASAP.” 

“Uh huh.” Jean-Louis opened the top drawer of his nightstand and took out the small container holding his pipe, rolling papers, and stash of weed. He grabbed the pipe and stuffed it lightly, then went out onto the balcony and took a few quick hits, just enough to get him pleasantly buzzed. Sex was always better if he wasn’t completely bombed out of his mind. He left the pipe to cool on the ashtray and went back inside, brushed his teeth, shaved and showered. 

James was already in bed and waiting for him when he turned off the bathroom light. When James pulled back the covers for him, he saw that he was fully erect, his cock long, thick, and rigid against his belly. It made Jean-Louis’s stomach lurch with excitement to see James so eager for him. It wasn’t a rare thing—James was always chomping at the bit for sex with him—but the sight of James’s naked body in a state of arousal did things to Jean-Louis that he couldn’t fight, couldn’t resist. He had tried to walk away from it many times before, but saying no to James’s passion was like saying no to a tsunami. Good luck with that. 

Jean-Louis clambered onto James and stretched out over him, the touch of his warm body against his own was so fucking right and perfect. He moaned out and realized how long it had been, how long they had been apart and not had _this_. “So good, daddy,” Jean-Louis breathed into James’s ear. “I’ve missed you, too.” 

And then James had his long fingers in his hair and was biting into his mouth, at his neck, at his chest, sucking kisses while he ground their hips together. He pushed Jean-Louis back so he was sitting upright straddling James’s hips and stroked his hands down Jean-Louis’s chest, then rubbed his thumbs across his nipples. Jean-Louis sighed out as they hardened into erect nubs, then gasped in a few stuttering breaths as James leaned forward and took each nipple into his mouth, licking and sucking while he gripped Jean-Louis’s buttocks and kneaded them firmly. Jean-Louis was panting, mouthing at James’s shoulder, the side of his face and earlobe. Cocks were left untouched; they both knew they weren’t going to last if they began stroking too soon, and as much as they wanted to use their mouths on each other that way, it would end things even sooner. 

“Inside me,” Jean-Louis moaned. “I want you inside me. Now. Daddy. Please.” 

James reached into his nightstand and pulled out a condom and bottle of lube. Unless he was caught short, James always wore a condom with Jean-Louis. A part of him liked to insist on it as a way of showing Jean-Louis that he knew about his unfaithfulness, but the real reason he shied away from barebacking with him was for a more practical purpose: he lasted longer if he wore a condom, the slight dulling of sensation was enough to give him those extra few minutes before he lost it. James needed every advantage he could get because the mere sight of Jean-Louis was enough to get him hard and on the verge of creaming his pants at times. Even after all these years, he couldn’t get enough of him. 

Jean-Louis turned over in James’s lap and faced the other way, reverse cowboy position, and offered his ass to the ministrations of James’s lubed fingers, first one, then two, then three. “So good, daddy,” Jean-Louis moaned as James slowly pumped his fingers in and out of him up to the knuckles. “More…more…” James pushed in four fingers and grinned as Jean-Louis keened out in pleasure. 

“That’s my baby,” James rumbled. He leaned down and bit playfully at each cheek. “Are you gonna take my cock now? Are you ready for me? ‘Cause I’m gonna make you take all of it.” 

“Mon dieu…yesss…” 

James removed his fingers and grasped his cock instead, positioned himself at Jean-Louis’s entrance, rubbing the crown there, teasing. 

“Ngh…fuck! Daddy!” 

With that, James grabbed Jean-Louis’s hips and brought him down onto his lap, plunging his cock into Jean-Louis, the entire length, in one swift movement. Jean-Louis cried out loudly and James could only hope that the kids were already asleep or at least wearing their headphones. By now they knew what to do to block out the noise. 

“Fuck, yeah! Work that ass. Show daddy how much you want it.” James landed a firm slap on a cheek and laughed when he felt Jean-Louis tense up all over. “C’mon. Let me see you move.” 

For James, there was nothing more spectacular than the sight of Jean-Louis riding his cock. Even the adrenalin rush of playing pro football couldn’t equal the surge of power and ego he experienced when he had Jean-Louis writhing on his dick like this. And to hear him whimpering and moaning and keening in ecstasy as he fucked himself without restraint was just the icing on the cake. James sat up and clutched him close to his chest, wrapped an arm beneath Jean-Louis’s knees and bounced him roughly in his lap. He felt Jean-Louis clench down around his cock and he knew he was close to the edge. 

“Turn around, baby. I wanna see you come,” James whispered into the side of his face. He planted a wet kiss on Jean-Louis’s neck and then he lifted him off his cock and sat him back down facing him. One look at Jean-Louis’s fuck-drunk eyes told James it would be over in seconds if he didn’t slow things down. James held both of them still and kissed Jean-Louis, wet and sloppy and slow, arms wrapped around him so he couldn’t move his hips. He trailed a hand down between Jean-Louis’s cheeks, fingered lightly against where they were connected, Jean-Louis stretched tight around his thick shaft, caressing both of them together. “I love you so much, baby,” James groaned, nibbling below his ear, “more than anything in the world.” 

“Let me come,” Jean-Louis moaned, “let me come.” James released him from his arms and Jean-Louis immediately dropped his hands back and clutched at James’s knees for support. He began rocking back and forth slowly, thighs spread wide, James’s cock sliding in and out of him rhythmically as Jean-Louis arched his back and quickened the pace. 

“So fucking beautiful. Fuck, baby, come with me.” James reached down and grasped Jean-Louis’s cock and stroked him hard and fast and in seconds Jean-Louis cried out and came, spurting over James’s hand and onto his own chest and James went with him with a loud grunt, his cock spasming deep inside him even as Jean-Louis shook apart in his lap.

For some moments, neither could do anything but pant, and then Jean-Louis collapsed back down onto James with an exhausted sigh. In a quiet voice, he mumbled into James's chest, “There's a job opportunity for me in London. What do you think about us moving there with the kids?”

James let the initial shock and anger wash over him like a wave, leaving him like a whale stranded dead on the beach. Then he silently chuckled to himself. Rather than say 'no' outright and be accused once more of being a tyrannical asshole, James merely replied with a yawn, "You'll have to run that by Chloe first." His daughter hadn't kicked his ass willy-nilly without James learning a thing or two from her about getting one's way. So he decided in the few minutes before sleep overtook him to let his supremely bitchy daughter run rampant over Jean-Louis on this matter. Yeah, he would let Chloe win the battle for him while he sat back and enjoyed the ensuing slaughter. He smiled innocently and kissed Jean-Louis on the cheek. "Ask her in the morning, baby. I'm sure she'll be thrilled to hear your idea."

 

 


	7. The Things We Do For Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James gets his way, present and past, but that means swallowing the good with the bad.

 

“Dad!” It was quarter past six and Chloe was yelling down the stairs leading into the basement. Her father usually listened to old people’s music during his morning workouts—bands like Metallica and Nine Inch Nails and rappers like Ludacris and Fifty Cent—and she wanted to make sure he could hear her over the music. James normally wore earbuds so he wouldn’t wake up the entire household, but Chloe was fifteen and had no such concerns. “I’m out of tampons!”

James almost dropped the weight ball onto his right foot. “Jesus, fuck! Chloe! Why don’t you let the whole world know you’re on the rag?”

Chloe sucked in an indignant breath and stomped down the stairs. She stood in front of her father and threw the empty Kotex box at his chest. “Don’t say _on the rag_! I hate that expression! I have my _period_ , okay. I’m _menstruating_.” 

A look of fear and nausea flashed across James’s face. Jean-Louis was away on another business trip, this time to Vancouver, and wouldn’t be back for another two days. In hindsight, it seemed that James had shafted himself by derailing Jean-Louis’s idea of moving the family to London. If James had agreed to it, he’d probably be seeing him every day rather than twelve days out of each month. But James had let Chloe be the one to say no. At the time, James had known that she was totally crushing on an older boy at school and nothing was going to tear her away from this new love interest. Sure enough, when Jean-Louis had brought up the idea over breakfast, Chloe had immediately thrown a fit, ran upstairs crying and Jean-Louis had followed her to her room. James had turned to face the stove, grinning at what he thought would be some long overdue payback for his spouse. He could hear Chloe screaming at the top of her lungs from where he stood all the way down in the kitchen. Boy, was she mad! And James hadn’t felt one iota of guilt. Neither Benjamin nor Marcel had said a word as their eggs cooled on their plates, they had been too busy listening to their sister rip a new hole into their Papa.

“How could you?” Chloe had sobbed. “How can you do this to me? I hate you!”

Jean-Louis had held his arms out helplessly. “Do what? What have I done? You’ve been to London before and you liked it so much. You said so yourself." 

“I’m in love, Papa! And I’m not going to leave him!” She had wiped angrily at her face but it only made her cry harder. “You _abandoned_ me for all those months… _you_ did it for love. Now, _I’m_ in love. _I’m_ in love and I won’t let you take it away from me!”

Realization had dawned quickly. “Ah, ma bichette.” Chloe wouldn’t turn fifteen for another three months, but Jean-Louis had only been thirteen when he had fallen in love with Sophie, his sister's best friend in school. He had believed it would last forever and it likely would have if she hadn’t dumped him after seven years. First loves were singular, though, in power, pain, and passion. He had been so swept up by it; he had drowned in it, was held a willing prisoner, even after she had set him free with her infidelity. “Then you must stay with him, yes? Nothing should come between true love.”

“Do you mean that, Papa? We don’t have to move to London?”

“No, we don’t have to move to London.” He had kissed Chloe tenderly on each cheek and wiped away her tears, hugged her, kissed her hair. Chloe would have everything Charlotte could not have in her abbreviated life. He would make it all up to Charlotte; her death wouldn’t be for naught. He would give his sister’s daughter her heart’s desire as penance, as atonement for his own transgressions. He would do at least one thing right in his life.

By New Year’s, Chloe’s fixation on the boy was over and she was on to her next teen girl obsession. Jean-Louis had turned down the opportunity in London for Chloe’s sake, but he’d been offered a different position at work, far more lucrative, which he readily accepted. James was thrilled, until he found out that Jean-Louis’s new responsibilities entailed regular travel for site visits—often overseas—for days to weeks at a time as a consultant to the natural gas and oil industries. Five months of feeling like a single parent again had elapsed and James could only kick himself as his daughter continued laying into him.

“You have to go to Walgreens right now!” Chloe ordered. She spoke to her father the same way she would issue a command to their dog, a spoiled Pomeranian named Fritzel, except her father obeyed more often than the dog.

“Fine,” James grumbled. “But you’re coming with me. I’m waiting in the car!” No way was he going to be seen buying feminine products again. The last time she had run out of supplies, he had to endure the humiliation of standing at the checkout counter while the male cashier smirked at him.

“I can’t!” Chloe shrieked. Tears were starting to roll down her cheeks. “I’m out of maxi pads, too. I can’t go in there with Kleenex stuffed in my panties, okay?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” James angrily wiped his face with a towel and headed up the stairs, yelling, “Marcel! We’re going to Walgreens!” He could have brought Benjamin instead, but Marcel was impervious when it came to awkward or embarrassing situations. The kid was born to it.

James found him in the kitchen eating dry granola straight out of the mason jar when he came up from the basement. At twelve closing in on thirteen, Marcel was still skinny as a rail, his unruly blond hair framing an angelic face. James stopped and stared for a moment. Jean-Louis had been a month and a half shy of fifteen when James had first met him at the University of Michigan all those years ago, but he could swear he was looking at his very image when Marcel had his face tilted a certain way.

“We gotta go pick up ‘lady supplies’ for your sister,” James told him. “Are we out of milk again?" He poked his head into the fridge and swore. "Shit. We can stop by Panera on our way back and get you some of those cheesy bagels that you like.”

“I want one, too!” Chloe cried out from the sunroom off the kitchen. She lay down on the sofa in a fetal position, sniffling. “And don’t forget the vegetable cream cheese.”

Marcel nodded at James, his mouth full of granola, untroubled by the nature of his mission. The imagery on the packages of feminine products was weirdly fascinating to him for reasons he didn’t understand; he hoped there would be a line at checkout to give him time to look over the illustrations and read the copy on the packages. While James rushed upstairs to change his clothes, Marcel went over to the sofa and sat down next to Chloe, gently rubbed her back to soothe her cramps. “Do you want your usual brand?”

“Yeah,” Chloe said and then whispered, “and get me a box of condoms, too.” She knew her father wouldn’t look in the bag if he thought it was full of pads and tampons.

Marcel stopped rubbing her back. “So…are you getting your period or not?”

“I will be if you do what I say,” she replied. Chloe reached up and brushed away the crumbs on Marcel’s chin. “You know how Dad is. I’m just trying to be safe.”

The words sank in and clicked. “Are you…having sex with Jonah?” Marcel asked, wide-eyed.

“I want to,” Chloe said matter-of-factly, “I’m ready to. And Papa says I can’t have sex unless the boy wears a rubber.”

“I don’t think Dad would agree with him,” Marcel reminded her.

Chloe rolled her eyes and huffed out a dismissive breath. “Dad never agrees with Papa. Are you going to help me or not?”

There was a noise in the kitchen, but it was only Benjamin opening the fridge rummaging for breakfast. Marcel turned back to Chloe and smiled. “Yeah, I’ll do it. If Dad catches me, I can always say they’re for Ben.”

***

James liked to tell the kids how he had won Jean-Louis over through sheer might and will power, a modern day Herakles laboring through virtually impossible tasks. As the years went by, the stories became fuzzier and fuzzier truth-wise until they no longer bore any real resemblance to what had actually transpired. They had become the stuff of myth. By James’s recounting, the two of them had endured years of heartbreaking separation, survived a torrid long-distance affair during which they were thwarted by circumstances beyond their control. Time and again, James had strode onto the stage like a hero to rescue his lost soul of a boy, deliver him from the clutches of perverts who wanted to lead him down the wrong path. Jean-Louis would sit quietly, his eyes wet with tears as he listened to James spinning these tales. The kids assumed that their Papa was overcome with emotion, as he often was when reminded of the past, but the tears were really just a reaction to the physical pain he was in whenever he had to swallow the heavily varnished “truth” coming out of James’s mouth.

Perhaps there was indeed a bit of Homeric melodrama to their relationship. James was in some ways like the faithful Odysseus trying desperately to get home to his beloved Penelope who had been left for years on her own fending off all those low-life suitors. There had been plenty of obstacles along the way—sirens and monsters, family and friends to ward off, cajole, deceive, bribe, threaten—but none of them had proved more daunting an adversary than Jean-Louis himself, who had tortured James relentlessly with his insurmountable stubbornness, his Frenchness, his Olympian commitment to infidelity. If gold medals were awarded for waywardness, Jean-Louis would be in the record books.

He wasn’t a serial cheater with all his paramours. No, Jean-Louis had been devoted to his first love Sophie who had broken his heart with her own lack of fidelity. He would have been faithful to his second love, a young man named Guy-Manuel who, like Sophie, eventually left him to marry someone else, someone who wasn’t borderline insane. There were others with whom he would have stayed true, if only they had not already been married to other people. But with James, he had never been able to resist the temptation to stray. During the first few years of marriage he had been steadfast by default. The children were still small and demanding and he had no opportunity to waver. Denver was not New York and he had James guarding him night and day and fucking him into submission. If he went out drinking and clubbing, rare as that was now, James was by his side like an unwanted chaperone and Jean-Louis didn’t dare act upon a stranger’s interest. He couldn’t risk James taking Marcel away from him in a fit of jealous, punishing anger.

Unlike the story James limned for their children and friends, Jean-Louis had returned to the States for the sake of Marcel and not because he couldn’t bear to live apart from James. It was a fairly accurate indication of his sad and deranged state of mind that Jean-Louis had ever entertained the thought that James might willingly hand Marcel over to him, that he would say, “Sure, take the kid…just because you asked. I’ll overlook the fact that I hate your guts, you self-centered, dishonest motherfucker!” Marcel was two and a half years old at the time of Jean-Louis’s pilgrimage back to Denver from Zürich after a year and a half long absence during which James thought he was dead from Hodgkin’s lymphoma. James had wanted to kill him for neglecting to share this small piece of information—the fact that he wasn’t dead but merely in a coma for a good four months and then in rehab for another year or so in Switzerland—but then the rational side of his brain took over and James gave him his ultimatum: commit to him and forsake all others or take a hike off a cliff. Jean-Louis wanted access to his son and since there was only one way to make it happen short of kidnapping, he agreed to James’s terms. He was willing to make the sacrifice. He owed it to Charlotte.

The truth had little to no romantic sheen, so Jean-Louis had always let James tell his soap operatic version of their reunion because Jean-Louis was hopelessly sentimental that way. Although James had basically blackmailed him to stay with him, it was worth it in Jean-Louis’s mind. He had gained back his son, the most precious piece of his sister Charlotte. He also had her other children, Benjamin and Chloe, an accidental result of her unfortunate coupling with James that proved to be an unexpected joy in the long run. Jean-Louis hadn’t planned on loving them, they weren’t supposed to be a part of his life, but there it was: he did love them, with all his heart even if that same heart remained wild and unsettled.

The day before the small, private wedding ceremony held on the patio behind their house, Jean-Louis had made a trip to the local weed dispensary and purchased a particularly sweet strain known for its powerful, long-lasting effects. He smoked the joint forty-five minutes before the guests started arriving. Then he said his vows under the temporary pergola set up outside as he stood facing James in front of James’s family and a motley mix of close friends, co-workers, and a few former Broncos teammates and coaches. Jean-Louis wasn’t nervous—the pot took care of that problem—and he said his vows in French, which made it all the more bearable. James knew only a few obscene phrases and curses in French and Jean-Louis was pretty sure there weren’t any French nationals in the audience, so he felt confident that no one would know what he was saying besides his own invited friends as he gazed into James’s eyes and blurted out the following impromptu speech in his native tongue:

_James,_

_The first time I saw you, I thought to myself, “Wow, what a meathead. How does this man even manage to tie his shoelaces? He’s big and could probably chop more wood than my own brothers. Yes. Probably.” Then, I got to know you a little better and you continued to blow my mind with your pig-headed determination to completely destroy my life. On that count you have succeeded like no other. Thanks a lot. We’ve been through so much and as time goes by I keep asking myself: Why? Why did I go down this road with you? Why didn’t I just step in front of an oncoming train instead? And yet, you persevered. You were always there, just around the corner, ready and waiting to pummel me, eager to show me that you were the very best at making me miserable. You fucked a lot of people before you met me. Why you ever stopped…well, there’s really no explanation for it other than your own stupidity. I know you think I’m yours now, I know I’ve promised you as much, but what can I say?_  

Jean-Louis paused at that point for several reasons. First, he noticed that James was openly crying tears of joy. Second, when he looked out into the audience, he saw that people were sniffling and dabbing their eyes with tissues. Third, the sun was going down and he wondered if hours had elapsed since he started rambling. So, being the considerate person that he was, he smiled sweetly at James and said in English, “Your turn,” and gave a nod to the officiating judge to let him know that he had finished.

James indeed was overwhelmed with happiness. Jean-Louis had told him beforehand that he wanted to say his vows in French and James had to admit, the way he was speaking to him and looking so soulfully into his eyes, he was convinced that Jean-Louis was saying the following words:

_James,_

_When I look at you, I see a god. Wow, you are the best. How can such a titan still walk the earth? You are big and strong and so good-looking. Yes. For sure. The first time you fucked me, I knew there would be no other person who could wield a cock such as yours. You said you would ruin me for others and you were right. Thank you so much. Through the years I have wondered: How? How is it possible to worship you more each day? How can desire grow stronger and more powerful through time? You are my guide, my teacher. Though I have been a cheating, whoring, faithless slut, all that is now behind me. From this moment onward, I will never want anyone else but you. I am yours completely, I see only you, how couldn’t I?_

Then it was James’s turn to say his vows. He was never good at memorization, so he took the note cards out of his pocket and read them carefully:

_Jean-Louis,_

_You are the love of my life. In the beginning, I didn’t know what it was, the things I felt when I thought about you. All I knew was that I felt sick every time you were near, but sick in a good way and not like hangover sick. I know it hasn’t been easy, but my love for you has never been in doubt, except for those few times when I wanted to kill you for various reasons, but now we have a beautiful family together and I would never do anything to hurt you, I swear. You have owned me from the start. I’ll say it again: you are my one true love. Everything about you makes me weak and I’m not ashamed to say that I am your slave forever. This is the happiest day of my life and I love you more than anything in the world. Amen._

The “amen” was something James just ad-libbed because he was so choked up by that point and bawling his eyes out. Then the judge had each of them recite the more traditional promises of respect, fidelity, and general decency, followed by the exchange of rings and kisses, which veered into the blatantly filthy because Jean-Louis was bombed and blissfully open and James was so very relieved that he forgot himself, forgot where he was, forgot people were watching him shove his tongue down Jean-Louis’s throat and grabbing his ass in his big hands. He looked like a three hundred pound nose tackle devouring a ham and Swiss sandwich the way he was sloppily eating Jean-Louis’s face with gusto. James’s younger brother Ted shouted, “Get a fucking room!” and that broke the spell at last. As Jean-Louis absently wiped the drool off his chin, James took the microphone and announced to the intimate crowd, “Drinks, food and music are on tap. Enjoy yourselves while I take my boy upstairs and fuck his brains out.” James’s mother Laura let her mouth fall open. “Sorry, Mom. We’ll join you all in half an hour! Peace out!” Then James picked Jean-Louis up and threw him over his right shoulder like a sack of potatoes and carried him upstairs to their bedroom.

“Get me out of this goddamn monkey suit!” James growled. His tux was rented and he hated any kind of formal wear although he liked seeing Jean-Louis dressed up. As stunning as he was naked, Jean-Louis had the kind of body that was made to wear haute couture, the kind of tall, sleek frame on which to hang something ridiculously chic and exorbitant. He was a classy 1960s Jaguar XKE—smooth, lean, muscular and graceful—compared to James’s 16 mpg Chevy Tahoe SUV with a maximum towing weight of 6000+ pounds, a square-jawed, in-your-face paragon of all-American brute strength and attitude.

“Are you ever going to wear that again?” asked James as he watched Jean-Louis carefully step out of a late-1980s silver- and gold-threaded Gaultier jumpsuit bought for him years ago by his fashion-forward mother Catherine at a Paris auction. She had given it to him as a twenty-first birthday present and he had worn it several times during 80s revival nights at various clubs in New York. The exquisite fit, loose in all the right places, allowed for particularly dirty dancing. To James’s more provincial eyes, he looked like he had taken a detour at a Hershey’s Kiss factory and emerged wrapped in shiny foil. An origami-like Issey Miyake ensemble in black and white, also bought by his mother to celebrate his remission from cancer, hung on the door to the walk-in closet, ready for him to don once James was through having his way with him.

“I might wear it again,” Jean-Louis demurred. “Perhaps at my next marriage.”

James kicked off his shoes angrily. “Fuck you. Just for that, I’m gonna make you scream.”

Boy, did he ever.

 


	8. Grasping at Straws

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're married, but what does it all mean? A bear suit makes an appearance.

The first few years of marriage were nothing short of bliss for James. He could hold Marcel over Jean-Louis’s head like the Sword of Damocles and there were moments when he truly had to stifle the laughter that threatened to escape each and every time he made Jean-Louis bite back some snide remark or made him acquiesce to some unreasonable demand just because he now held the upper hand. For _once_ , James held the upper hand, and it was unbelievably satisfying. In the past, Jean-Louis had fought him at every turn and _won_ because James had nothing that Jean-Louis truly wanted, needed. No more. And James was going to enjoy every victory that had been denied to him in the past. 

They married on August 17th, Jean-Louis’s birthday. James insisted on that date for a reason. “You belong to me now, baby,” James told him. “Your life starts today with me, and it’ll end with me.” Then, to prove he wasn’t a complete asshole, he took Jean-Louis to the Grand Canyon for their honeymoon, then onward to Yellowstone, where they stayed in one of the grand historic hotels. They fucked like animals and Jean-Louis howled for him like a wolf howls for its alpha mate. He was so beautiful, his Jean-Louis, so wild and beautiful, yet so strangely compliant. James had him now and there was little chance of him escaping. It had never been like this before. “I love you,” James told him after every climax, over and over, hoping the words would etch themselves into Jean-Louis’s heart like acid onto a copper plate. Never once, though, did Jean-Louis utter the same words back to him. He would only say “Daddy” or “James” or “tue-moi” or other mysterious words in French beyond James’s comprehension. He never said “Je t’aime.” Even James knew what that meant, but he never heard it leave Jean-Louis’s lips during the entire honeymoon. No matter. Jean-Louis had said “I love you” in the past and what good had that been? Had he ever meant it even once? It was a painful thing to accept, but James had learned the hard way that he couldn’t make Jean-Louis love him back; he could only love him more in return.

The following spring, he took Jean-Louis and the kids to Florida for Easter. Jean-Louis’s family was still furious over the marriage—a travesty against God according to Catherine—and his brother Paul had threatened to beat Jean-Louis to a pulp or worse if he showed his sinning face in Arbois. So they spent three days on the soft white sands of Sarasota collecting shells and splashing in the warm waters of the Gulf. To see Jean-Louis playing with the children—the twins were barely five and Marcel not quite three at the time—holding and kissing them, it felt to James as if they had always been together, as if they had always been a family and all the time apart had been lived by someone else.

The night before they returned to Denver, he asked Jean-Louis, “Are you happy?” They were in bed, the kids already asleep in the other bed in their hotel suite, and James was quietly stroking their cocks together in his fist while Jean-Louis squirmed beside him.

“What do _you_ think?” Jean-Louis whispered, clearly annoyed. “I’m hard, aren’t I?”

“I’m not talking about your dick. I’m talking about us.”

“Us? What about us?”

James stilled his hand. “Are you happy about us?”

Jean-Louis sighed. He had been close to coming but now he felt all desire ebbing away like the tide. He knew where this was heading and he did _not_ want to go there. It had taken all his will power to get to this point—he had stuffed his entire self into a box and locked it up in a room and now James was trying to get into that room and open that damn box like some idiot Pandora loosing evil upon the world. “Why do you have to do this, James? Why can’t you just leave it alone?” Inside he was screaming, just screaming bloody murder, he was so angry with James, with himself for allowing all of this to happen, this thing that was now his life. Eat it, he told himself, swallow it and shut up! He could see James’s eyes glinting in the dark, the disappointment in them, the hurt. Nothing had really changed. They were still playing this stupid game. “Just. Just fuck me, okay?” Jean-Louis rolled onto his stomach and pressed his face into the pillow so he wouldn’t have to look at James. “Don’t be gentle.” There was nothing like pain to erase all thought and, right now, he didn’t want to think about anything. He heard the rustle of a condom packet being torn open, felt slick fingers at his entrance, then the heavy weight of James on top of him settling between his legs.

“I just want you to be happy,” James murmured into his ear.

Jean-Louis lifted his hips and moaned softly as James pushed in. “I know.” It hurt. It always hurt. It was the only thing that made sense to him at times, the one thing that made him feel close to James. _This_ he could understand and it freed him from his own misery. He had bottomed for others in the past and had enjoyed some fairly mind-blowing sex, but with James it had never been so simple. Even now, he could only view his relationship with James the way one looks at the sun: indirectly lest he burn his eyes. He still couldn’t comprehend his feelings for him. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t desire. It wasn’t need. He had felt these things with others, but not with James. Why not? Why couldn’t he? Was it all a matter of time?

***

Drinks at the bar were half-price for ladies on Wednesday nights but that wasn’t the only reason the place was packed. Wednesdays were when Jean-Louis worked the tables and he was a shameless flirt, almost as shameless as the women who left their boyfriends and husbands at home to get trashed on cocktails served by a very attractive young man who spoke with a French accent.

“Look at those crazy chicks.” James was at the register watching a table of four very drunk women pawing at Jean-Louis amidst raucous laughter. He turned to his bartender, Andy, and muttered, “Why don’t they just take him out back and rape the shit out of him?”

“Pretty sure they’re already doing that in their heads,” Andy observed. “Still, he brings them in, so…”

Business had been lousy when James had taken over the dingy pub from his friend Joe. After his retirement from pro football, James needed something to do besides sporadic work for the NFL Network, and he was already part owner of the place, a real dive in a crummy part of town, but James was fond of the place for nostalgic reasons. It was similar to the bar his grandfather had patronized back in Michigan—all knotty oiled pine darkened by years of cigarette smoke and grease—and it was where James had first run into Jean-Louis six years after their student days at the University of Michigan. That accidental meeting at the Bratty Cat Pub had changed James’s life, blew it all to smithereens and he was still putting the pieces back together again.

Jean-Louis had reappeared like a ghost from the past a year after James had bought the bar. They had married two months later and then Jean-Louis had come to work with him there after James fired the manager for pilfering their inventory. Jean-Louis was a lunatic in many ways, but he had a good head for data and it took only one quick look at the books for him to know that the numbers weren’t adding up. On most days, Jean-Louis worked in the back office dealing with suppliers and handling the accounting end of things. Then, after surveying the demographics, he altered the food menu to cater to the different people showing up on the various days of the week: mostly university students on Tuesdays and Fridays, women on Wednesdays, then the football fanatics on Thursdays, Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays. Business doubled, then tripled, and after eight months they were in the black for the first time. The rowdiest crowds turned out to be the women coming on Wednesdays for their half-priced drinks and their dose of Jean-Louis.

“Maybe we should make Wednesdays half-priced drinks for lesbians only,” James muttered.

***

Five years later, James regretted ever _thinking_ that, because in front of him sat two women, a blond and a brunette, making out unapologetically at the bar. In his younger days, James would have taken that as a challenge and propositioned them for a threesome, but not anymore. As sexy as he thought women were, he couldn’t see himself fucking anyone but his Jean-Louis. Then Jean-Louis walked in at six-thirty, the kids in tow, still dressed for the office. He had gone back to working at Core, Inc. half a year ago but would usually drop in to see James in the evening on Wednesdays when James worked the late shift. James couldn’t deny that the crowds had thinned on Wednesdays ever since Jean-Louis had stopped working the tables.

“I thought the kids could have something to eat here tonight,” Jean-Louis told him. Then he smiled at the blond-haired lesbian. “You made it!” He introduced James and the kids to Kerrie, and Kerrie introduced everyone to her girlfriend Stephanie. James seemed to be the only one out of the loop and feeling just a little uncomfortable. Maybe it was the idea that Jean-Louis was making a life for himself apart from him, or maybe it was because Kerrie reminded James too much of Charlotte, Jean-Louis’s dead sister and the mother of their children. He couldn’t begrudge Jean-Louis for having his own friends and acquaintances. If anything, Jean-Louis had always preferred that he and James keep their lives outside the family separate. Jean-Louis rarely ever accompanied James to any of his social functions and celebrity appearances, though he no longer worried about being seen with him in public. He was finally over _that_ hurdle. Still, the way that Jean-Louis was behaving around this woman made James worry.

“How long have you known her?” James asked him the next morning at breakfast.

“Kerrie? Oh, I don’t know, four, five months. I told you, she works on the same campus…”

“Yeah, I know what you said. You two seem to be fast friends,” James muttered into his coffee. He hated feeling like this.

“Are you jealous?” asked Jean-Louis. He was mildly annoyed. “I don’t get jealous over any of _your_ friends.”

“No, you wouldn’t, would you?”

“No.” It was true. James could have as many meathead friends as he wanted. He could go out with a different Playboy bunny each night for all Jean-Louis cared. None of it bothered him and that only made James more upset, the fact that Jean-Louis was above it all.

“I’m not jealous,” James grumbled.

“Well, then, stop acting like a bear.” Then, Jean-Louis gasped all of a sudden in surprise.

“What?” James asked.

“I know what to get you for Christmas!” Jean-Louis exclaimed.

***

It took a while, but he finally found a grizzly suit that would fit him. The kids were awed into stunned silence when James held it up Christmas morning and said, “What the _fuck_ is this?”

In unison, the kids screamed, “Put it on, Dad!”

“No fucking way!”

“Yeah, yeah, put it on! Put it on!”

“You kids got Beats headphones so you don’t get to tell me to put on…whatever this is…what _is_ this?”

“It’s a bear suit,” explained Jean-Louis.

“Yeah! A bear suit!” screamed the kids.

“For what? This is Christmas! Not Halloween! How could you do this to me?”

“Put it on! Put it on! Put it on!” chanted the kids. They jumped up and down on the leather sectional in the living room, working themselves into a frenzy.

Jean-Louis sipped his heavily spiked eggnog and shrugged. “You’ll thank me later.”

In the end, James put the suit on and spent the next hour or so getting attacked by three crazed children. Seeing him in the suit turned them into wild animals for some reason and they went at him like a pack of wolves, James on all fours, three pairs of hands clawing at the fur.

“Who the fuck is biting my ass?” James screamed. “That’s enough! Enough, goddamn it!”

“Breakfast is ready!” Jean-Louis called from the kitchen. This was going to be the best Christmas ever, he smiled to himself. “Come eat kids. I think your father is going to need a shower first.” He served them crepes with fresh berries, Nutella and whipped cream. When James joined them later, Jean-Louis made him a savory crepe stuffed with cheese, spinach, and ham. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Jean-Louis asked as he set the plate in front of James. He gave him an affectionate kiss and ran his fingers through James’s damp hair.

“You have my own children murder me at Christmas. How could that be bad?”

“Let’s do it again after breakfast!” Marcel pleaded.

“No," grumbled James, "your Dad’s done getting killed. Once is enough.”

“Are you going to wear that for Halloween?” asked Benjamin.

“You know what?” James said. “If I wore that trick-or-treating with you guys, I’d probably get attacked by a real bear. Wouldn’t _that_ be great, huh?” He shot Jean-Louis an angry look. “You see what you’ve done? I hope you’re sorry. And to think, I got you a shitload of the best caviar. Some Russian mobster is probably wondering what happened to his supply.”

Later that night, though, Jean-Louis had James put on the bear suit in their bedroom and showed him the concealed opening at the crotch. “Oh ho...I get it,” grinned James.

Something about all that fur drove Jean-Louis bonkers. His lover during his year-long rehab in Zürich after his coma had been a very hirsute man and it had been an unexpected turn-on. To feel all that hair on his bare skin had brought back such sweet, filthy memories.

"James!" Jean-Louis moaned. "James! I love you."

James was sweating like a pig in that ridiculous suit, but it was all worth it to hear those precious words. I. Love. You. It didn't even matter if it were true or false. He had enough love for both of them. 

"I love you, too, baby," James panted. "I love you, too."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the hiatus. Too many other things going on. I'll try to post more regularly.


	9. Three is Not a Crowd

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean-Louis meets his kind of woman.

 

The actual cheating didn’t start in earnest until the fifth year. The supposed seven-year itch had arrived two years early if one believes that kind of nonsense, and five years _late_ by Jean-Louis’s own reckoning. As a child, Jean-Louis had known that his mother Catherine—and his father Charles, most likely—had kept lovers on the side and it had never been a cause for strife in his parents’ marriage. In fact, it may have been the very reason his parents had remained deeply in love with each other until his father’s untimely death from Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age forty-eight. But James had always insisted on monogamy for some unfathomable reason, as if it had anything to do with love. What did monogamy have to do with love? As far as Jean-Louis was concerned, his cock was one thing, his heart was another organ altogether, and sometimes the two didn’t align in purpose or desire. Why couldn’t James understand this? What James gave him was…Jean-Louis wasn’t even sure what is was. Familiarity? Safety? A cage in which he could die with all his regrets? A pair of arms willing to embrace a wretched soul? A father to his sister’s children? A father to him? Or maybe a brother ready to punish him for his transgressions and love him all the same? Even if it were all these things, it wasn’t enough.

***

Jean-Louis had become good friends with a woman named Kerrie. She had long blond hair, a straight delicate nose, blue eyes and, like himself, had just turned thirty-three. She had the kind of brash personality and petite feminine looks that was right in Jean-Louis’s wheelhouse. Kerrie worked for a marketing firm that rented a suite of offices in the same corporate building complex in which Jean-Louis was employed as an analytics team director for Core, Inc., a company offering biostratigraphic services to the oil and gas industry. After over four years of working alongside James at the pub as his business partner managing the books, he received a call from his friend and former co-worker at Core, Inc., a fellow stoner named Sam. The company was looking to fill an upper management slot and Sam knew that Jean-Louis was bored out of his skull. As much as he loved to drink on the job, Jean-Louis couldn’t see himself spending the rest of his life serving rowdy frat boys and glum middle-aged men and getting molested by sexually disatisfied women. So when Sam told him about the opportunity, he jumped at it and went back to the company at which he had worked before his illness had first taken hold of him eight years prior.

The office complex consisted of an H-shaped, four-story, glass and steel building, with an airy, light-filled atrium connecting the north and south wings. The atrium housed a series of conference rooms and corporate dining facilities, a dry cleaners, a daycare center, a Walgreens, a hair salon, a Gold’s Gym, a Chipotle, a Panera, and both a Starbucks and a Dunkin’ Donuts. These facilities were well used by the employees from both wings of the building and proved a godsend for those who were in the habit of working 24/7 or who were snowed in for the night.

Jean-Louis had met Kerrie at the Walgreens when they were both standing next to each other in line during a lunch break. He was holding a box of condoms and she was toting a box of super plus tampons. They happened to catch each other’s eyes at the same time and decided that they were carrying equally embarrassing items.

“I wish I could get these at Costco,” Jean-Louis told her. “They sell 100-packs there for only $24.99.” Had he remained in France like most sensible French people, he would have never dreamt of mentioning the price, but after a decade of exposure to the American way of life, he could talk about the cost of things without dying of shame.

“Tell me about it. I can get a 96-pack of Tampax for only $13.99 at Costco. _This_ is a rip-off…an 18-pack for $6.99? Give me a break. Still, my ‘friend’ isn’t going to wait.” She looked over at his 12-count box of Trojan Magnum XL condoms. “What’s _your_ excuse? Can’t you just wait until after work? I mean, Costco is only five miles away. Are you planning on having sex at the office?”

“Um…no…they don’t carry this particular kind at Costco unfortunately…they’re not for me anyway…” He realized too late that this inane conversation should have never gotten off the ground in the first place. There was still one person ahead of him before he could get to the cashier, so he decided it was best to feign interest in the various types of sugarless gum on display. The very attractive woman behind him was still intent on talking to him though.

“Not for you?” she prodded. “Who are they for, then?”

Jean-Louis cleared his throat. He had no reason to lie to this person. “My partner.” He remembered the ring on his finger and added, “My spouse.” He had never been able to say _husband_. It sounded so very wrong and it was hard enough to say _spouse_ or even _partner_ or, pre-marriage, _boyfriend_. He had no trouble saying _lover_ although, now that they were married, that didn’t seem right either.

“Ah, I get it. You married a guy with a big schlong. Good for you. My girlfriend uses a strap-on when we fuck, but we don’t have to bother with condoms. Not getting prego anytime soon, that’s for sure.” She drummed her fingers impatiently on her box of tampons. “What’s taking so long up there? I gotta get one of these suckers up inside me ASAP or there’s going be some major panty damage.”

Jean-Louis laughed and introduced himself. “I'm at Core, Inc. over in the south wing.” He shook her hand and noticed that her palm felt warm and dry, her nails painted a light blue.

“Kerrie Hamels. I’m with Apex Media, north wing. Why haven’t I seen you before?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been here for the last month. Well, actually, I’ve worked here before, but that was eight years ago.”

“I see. Well. We should go out for drinks sometime. I’ll bring my girlfriend Stephanie and you can bring your _spouse_.”

Jean-Louis smiled back at her. Christ, she was lovely. “James,” he said. “His name is James and…” It was his turn at the cash register finally but he waved Kerrie ahead of him. “You go first. My panties aren’t in any danger.”

***

He started seeing Kerrie regularly, sometimes for lunch at Panera or Chipotle, sometimes for a quick coffee at Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts. He had forgotten how good it felt to be in the company of a woman, especially one who knew better than to wear too much make-up and who spoke something other than English. Kerrie’s family was from the Netherlands and she was fluent in Dutch, German, French, Italian, and English. Both of her parents had worked for the pharmaceutical company Novartis, her father in Research and Development and her mother in Drug Regulatory Affairs at their site in Basel, Switzerland. When Kerrie was eleven, her parents transferred to the Novartis offices in Emeryville, California, right outside of San Francisco, but each year her family would continue to spend a few weeks in August visiting family and friends back in Europe.

She was an only child and sexually precocious from an early age. By the time she was sixteen, she had already had several lovers, boys her own age from school as well as much older men, the fathers of the children she would babysit to make spending money. She experimented freely in college and met her current girlfriend, Stephanie, three years ago at a company Christmas party when Stephanie was still married to one of Kerrie’s co-workers, a hotshot marketing genius named Tuffy Archer, who had since joined a firm in Los Angeles. Neither she nor Stephanie had ever engaged in a serious relationship with another woman, but they had clicked instantly over martinis and by the end of the night, they had made out in the women’s bathroom and found that, fuck it, they really liked each other and weren’t averse to the idea of going all the way. Why not? They were both young and attractive and open to just about anything. After Stephanie’s divorce, they moved in together and confirmed that sex with each other was better than the sex they had been having with men. A dildo never tired, never flagged, never went limp at the worst times. A dildo was never too small or too big, too thin or too thick. They could have whatever they wanted whenever they wanted without fear of disease or unwanted pregnancy. It was perfect.

Jean-Louis's meetings with Kerrie often reminded him of the time he spent with his own sister Charlotte over the Christmas holidays when they would get stoned and talk about their lives apart from each other, all the intimate details that they would share with no one else. With Kerrie Jean-Louis could talk about James and the kids and Kerrie would tell him about her partner Stephanie, a real estate attorney who ran a very lucrative practice in nearby Englewood. Their chats would often veer into silliness.

“Wouldn’t it be great to work at the United Nations as a translator?” Kerrie proposed one day. They were at the Dunkin’ Donuts eating glazed donut holes after they had snuck outside and shared a joint during lunch hour. The campus was sited on a former golf course and many of the employees would take ‘strolls’ during lunch breaks, when they could easily duck behind a hedge for a quick toke or two. Pot always made Kerrie extra garrulous and creative. She had a pitch meeting with a client after lunch and was already ahead of the game. “So, like, the French Prime Minister is babbling away up there at the podium...blah blah blah…and you’re in your little booth wearing a polka dot bowtie and striped suspenders and translating all that gobbledygook into Queen’s English…and you’re just making shit up for fun, like ‘…and furthermore, the American people can suck our magnificently uncut cocks’ when the poor fuck is actually talking about allowing unpasteurized dairy products into the States.”

Jean-Louis was suddenly teary-eyed. “Will you marry me?” he choked out. This was definitely the woman for him.

She took a sip of her coffee. “Dude, you’re already married.”

“Ahhh…yesss…what if we lived in Utah? Can’t people have more than one spouse in Utah?”

“I think you have to be a Mormon.”

“Hmmm…no…I like being Catholic…”

Kerrie tsk-tsked him. “That’s bullshit. Being a Protestant is so much better. You get to read the Good Book without the Pope telling you what to think. Plus, you can use as much birth control as you want.”

“Can you have abortions?”

“Why not? We don’t have a Pope telling us we can’t.”

“James is Protestant,” Jean-Louis sighed. “He doesn’t know one word of Latin. Not even common phrases, like _carpe diem_ or _caveat emptor_ or _pro bono_. I’m married to an imbecile.”

“Well, my Stephanie is Jewish and it’s fantastic. They have the best holidays. Their Christmas lasts for a week. Shit, I love getting presents. Last year, I got a pair of cashmere socks, cashmere! Christ, I love cashmere. I got a cashmere wrap, cashmere gloves…”

“I’m sensing a theme…”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I told her beforehand, ‘Honey, I don’t care what you get me, just make sure it’s cashmere.’ She’s the best. You see how she actually _listened_ to me? If she were a guy, I would have gotten cotton, Lycra, wool, nylon, duct tape, who knows? That’s the big difference between men and women. Women pay attention to what people say.”

“That’s true,” agreed Jean-Louis. “Men have very selective hearing. If someone says, ‘Tits at one o’clock’ in a bar, every guy will look in that direction. But if you say, ‘The trash needs to go out tonight,’ they’ll just turn the sound up higher on the television. We’re pathetic.” He ate another donut hole and thought about Christmas. The holiday was only a month away and he hadn’t even begun to think of a gift for James. “You know what I’d like for Christmas?”

“What?”

“I’d like to have sex with a completely hairy man. Or, if not that, then I’d like to have sex on animal pelts.”

“Ooohh…like sable or mink! I could definitely get into that. Imagine rolling around in all that luxurious softness. I’m going to tell Stephanie to get me that: a quilt made out of sable and mink pelts and then I’m going to have sex on it.”

“Can I come over some time?”

***

The fact that they had yet to socialize outside of work added a layer of frisson to their conversations. They knew that they would eventually take it to another level at some point, but the slow anticipation was part and parcel of the delicious ache that was central to desire. That they were deeply attracted to each other was obvious to them both almost immediately, and the fact that they were both 'foreigners' allowed them to share an easy bond, a commonality of experiences separate from the lives they lived with their own partners, a bond he didn’t realize he had missed and craved until he had stumbled upon it once more. Jean-Louis would return home from the office feeling horny and frustrated, the secret of his desire for Kerrie glowing like a hot coal inside him.

“Take your clothes off and get on the bed,” Jean-Louis ordered one night. It was after the Christmas and New Year’s holidays and things had settled back into a normal routine at work, which meant he had met Kerrie for coffee earlier in the day and had spent the rest of the afternoon daydreaming about her. He badly needed to get laid.

“What’s gotten into you?” James wasn’t used to Jean-Louis being so aggressive; no, Jean-Louis was usually the tease, the reluctant prey, coy and resistant to James’s ardent displays of lust.

“Shut up. I’m going to fuck myself on your cock and you’re going to like it.” Jean-Louis put a hand on James’s chest and shoved him backwards, his eyes wild and impatient.

“Ohhh-kaaay…” A smirk curled onto James lips. He was going to like this alright. By the time he had divested himself of his clothes, his cock was already thick and rigid. He grasped it in his right hand and gave it a decadent stroke before he lowered himself onto the bed, his gaze never leaving Jean-Louis’s flushed face. “I’m all yours, baby. Come and get it.”

Jean-Louis licked his lips and sauntered over to the bedroom door and locked it. He didn’t want Marcel walking in on them again. Then he stripped slowly out of his tie and shirt, fondling himself through his trousers so James could see the outline of his erection, see how eager he was. He stood just out of hands’ reach and touched his chest, grazing his nipples before trailing his fingers down his flat abdomen and then onto his own engorged cock, biting his lower lip and moaning softly. He took his sweet ole time stepping out of his pants and briefs.

“Are you trying to kill me?” James croaked. “Get over here.”

“No. Not until you’re ready for me.” Jean-Louis put two fingers into his mouth and sucked on them.

“Holy fuck. What? Oh.” James opened the nightstand drawer and pulled out a condom and quickly rolled it on, took out the bottle of lube and slicked up his cock. He held his hand out to Jean-Louis, his voice low and gravelly, “C’mon baby, you’re next.”

At that, Jean-Louis moved onto the bed, straddling James’s hips as he bent over him on his hands and knees. James reached between his spread thighs and pushed a lubed finger inside him, then another, and another, pulling filthy moans out of him. Jean-Louis pushed James’s hand aside after just a few moments, he couldn’t wait, no, he wanted James’s cock inside him, opening him up and filling him to bursting. He didn’t want it to be easy; he wanted it to be rough and hard and brutal. He wanted to scream at the top of his lungs. James’s cock was pressing right at his entrance and Jean-Louis lowered himself down an inch or two before his muscles constricted in protest.

“Ah merde,” he grunted. “Je te hais.” _I fucking hate you_. He gripped James’s shoulders and forced himself to take another few inches even as he grimaced with discomfort. James brought his hands up to grasp his hips but Jean-Louis batted them away. “Take your hands off me! Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me until I tell you to.”

“Okay, baby. No hands.” James reached back and gripped the slats of the headboard instead.

“Mon dieu.” The sight of James’s thick arms with their bulging muscles, the wide expanse of his chest, the masculine scent of him…all of it was maddening. “You’re so fucking gorgeous,” groaned Jean-Louis as he worked his way down the length of his cock until his ass was pressed right against James’s balls.

James was taken aback. These were the words and actions that normally came from him, not Jean-Louis. For a moment it felt as if their usual roles were reversed, Jean-Louis dominating him, setting the pace, having his way with him while James lay docile and just _took it_. “Fuck, baby, show me how much you want it.” James jerked his hips upwards into him, making Jean-Louis gasp and wince with each violent thrust.

Jean-Louis leaned back, his hands reaching desperately for James’s thighs to steady himself. “Hold still,” he groaned. James complied and gripped the headboard tighter to keep from thrashing underneath him. Jean-Louis began undulating his hips slowly, angling his body so that James’s cock was sliding deliciously against his prostate, driving himself insane with an ache so deep and overwhelming that he could only utter a string of profanities in French, head thrown back, spine arched into an exquisite curve, the muscles of his chest and abs straining with each grinding movement.

“Oh, fuck…put your hands on me now…now, daddy…”

“Yeah, baby, daddy’s gonna take care of you,” James grunted. He gripped the shaft of Jean-Louis’s cock firmly in one hand, his thumb pressing against the sensitive spot right under the head, his other hand at his hip, long fingers grasping an ass cheek so tightly he was leaving marks. “You’re gonna come so hard for me, aren’t you? Fuck, you’re so good, so perfect.” He stroked his cock with an agonizingly light touch, brushing his thumb across the head several times, his own excitement threatening to run wild as he felt Jean-Louis tightening down on him, his breath coming in shallow gasps. “Come for me, baby.”

James watched him climax—as beautiful and profound a sight as any a man could see—watched him convulse and cry out to the ceiling, his body trembling like a feather on a bird of paradise as he shook apart and painted them both. James waited for him to wind down, caressed his heaving chest as he offered his other hand to Jean-Louis, let him taste himself on his fingers before pulling him down for a deep biting kiss. When he felt Jean-Louis relax enough to release his cock from the tightest of embraces, James took charge at last. He flipped Jean-Louis onto his back, gripped the back of his knees in his hands and pinned them against the mattress, practically folding him in half.

“I’m gonna make you mine,” James growled. He fucked mercilessly into him, freed finally to do as he pleased. He came after just six hard thrusts, Jean-Louis struggling against each brutal snap of his hips, giving James exactly what he wanted as he emptied himself into him. “Oh, fuck, baby. This never gets old.” James rolled off of him, laughing and panting.

They lay sweating and breathless for a few moments, and then Jean-Louis murmured, “Kiss me, daddy.” At times like this, when he was completely wrecked and brain dead after their lovemaking, he could believe that all things were possible, he could run ahead of his own doubt and see a future with James somehow, especially when James bent over him once more and kissed him, all sloppy and full-mouthed and wet, tongue insistent and bossy like the man himself. When James pulled away to rest back onto the sheets, Jean-Louis asked, “Do you ever want to fuck someone else?”

James groaned. “Jesus F-ing H. Christ! Not _that_ again!”

“Shhh…you’ll wake the kids.”

“What? Shush my ass! If they’re awake, it’s because of all your screaming ten minutes ago.”

“More like two minutes ago,” mumbled Jean-Louis. He listened for any sounds down the hallway but heard only silence. Maybe the kids were wearing their new headphones.

“What is wrong with you? Why are you picking a fight? Shit. We’re both covered in cum and you want to know if I’d rather fuck someone else? How can you even ask such a stupid thing?” James dragged a hand across his own chest, now tacky with drying semen. “You see this? That’s you all over me, okay? You better get your head checked if you think I’d let anyone else dump their load all over me. For fuck’s sake…”

“No…I mean…do you ever want to be with a woman again? You used to have sex with women all the time. Don’t you miss that?”

James rolled onto his side so he could stare directly at Jean-Louis and give him the evil eye. “Where is this coming from? What’s going on with you?”

“I’m just curious. Do you miss having sex with a woman?”

“Do _you_? Is this what this is? You want to fuck a woman? Shit. You are such a goddamn slut.” James lay back down, his heart beginning to race with panic. Calm down, he told himself. Better he want to whore around with a woman than with another man because _that_ would be unacceptable. That would require the use of both of his fists to beat some motherfucker to death. “This isn’t about me at all, is it? This is about you and your cheating heart and that wayward dick of yours that you can’t seem to keep in your pants for two fucking seconds!”

“You are so unfair!” Now Jean-Louis was shouting. “I haven’t even dared to look at another person for…for years!” Then he said in a softer tone, “I can’t help it if I like women.”

“Oh God.” James pressed both of his fists against his forehead and sighed with defeat. “Please tell me you haven’t—”

“I haven’t done a thing,” interrupted Jean-Louis. “My dick hasn’t left my pants to go wandering into someone’s pussy behind your back. I’m just trying to have a conversation with you.”

“Yeah, some conversation. You really know how to find the perfect time and circumstance to tell me you want to start fucking other people again. Do I need to remind you that we’re _married_? You made a commitment to me _not_ to fuck other people. That’s supposed to mean something, can you understand that? And I swear, if you let some cocksucker put his dick in your ass, I will kill the both of you.”

Jean-Louis let out a derisive huff of air. “No you wouldn’t.”

“Oh really? What makes you so sure?”

“What would you tell the kids? Huh? What would you say to them when you’re holding my decapitated head in one hand and some other guy’s chopped off dick in your other hand? How would you explain _that_ to them?” Jean-Louis poked him in the chest for emphasis.

“Christ, you are so fucking obnoxious!” James held his thumb and forefinger a quarter inch apart in front of Jean-Louis’s face and said, “I am _this_ close to punching your lights out.” Then he pounded his fist into the mattress and got up abruptly.

“Yes, of course. Where are you going?” Jean-Louis asked.

“I’m taking a shower,” James spat out. “I’m gonna wash your filthy cum off of me!”

That hurt. Jean-Louis stared up at the ceiling, his throat constricting with regret and anger, James’s words doing their intended damage. What had possessed him to open his mouth and let James know what he was thinking? Had his desire for Kerrie made him so reckless? It was too late to take it back now, though. He would have to keep pressing forward. After a few minutes he pulled himself off the bed and went into the bathroom.

He stood by the glassed-in shower stall. “May I come in?”

James continued soaping himself, his jaw set and face impassive. God, he was so royally pissed off. But when he gazed into Jean-Louis’s eyes and saw the pain his words had caused, he couldn’t stay one hundred percent furious at him, not when he was looking so forlorn. He motioned him under the hot spray, hugged him and kissed into his mouth. “I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t mean what I said…you know I love it when you cum all over me. But I’m warning you, don’t keep messing with my heart or there’s going to be hell to pay.”

“I know,” Jean-Louis said. He kissed him back. He had always known that there would be hell to pay. No one owed more to the devil than he did.

 


	10. Saint Valentine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean-Louis spends Valentine's Day with Kerrie.

 

He looked like he had fallen into a pool of starving lampreys.

“Holy shit! What happened to you?” Kerrie stared at the numerous hickies dotting Jean-Louis’s exposed neck, chest, arms and thighs. “Talk about Rocky Mountain spotted fever!” She had only ever seen him fully clothed, always dressed formally in a bespoke three-piece suit and tie at work while everyone around him was clad in shorts and T-shirts practically. Dressing down for him was taking off his jacket and putting on his white lab coat on occasional visits to the assay room. He was high up on the ladder at his company now, and spent most of his time meeting with lawyers and executives from the oil and gas industry, so he had to look the part. She had told him more than once that he was in the wrong business. He was meant to be a model clad only in haute couture or nothing at all. He had responded dryly, “You should meet my mother.”

Jean-Louis looked down at himself and turned red with embarrassment. “Ah, fuck me.”

It was mid-February and he was in Aspen on a weekend ski trip with Kerrie. Kerrie had proposed it as a couples’ getaway for Valentine’s Day, but then her girlfriend Stephanie had to visit her ailing mother in Palm Springs and James wouldn’t go near a ski slope. An ice rink for hockey was another story, but James had told him to go and have fun. He had given up on trying to prevent Jean-Louis from cheating. As soon as James had met Kerrie—Jean-Louis had invited her and Stephanie to the bar one evening after work—he knew she was the one who had reignited Jean-Louis’s craving for female flesh. James knew all-to-well what kind of woman was Jean-Louis’s “type” and Kerrie fit that description to a tee. If she kept him infatuated enough to preclude any affairs with men, then James had to consider that a draw, one that was infuriating but not requiring double first degree murders and a lifetime jail sentence. So he had let Jean-Louis go to Aspen with Kerrie and prayed that the sex would be a gigantic disappointment and that his slut of a spouse would come back to him with his tail between his legs. What else could James do? He made sure that this woman knew that Jean-Louis belonged to him and him alone, though; he left no doubt about that.

Jean-Louis lowered himself quickly into the hot tub before the other guests could see the marks James had left on him the night before. They were staying at a posh resort owned by the husband of James’s former girlfriend Krista, with whom James had remained close. Jean-Louis had finally met Krista at their wedding and liked her instantly. “You’re the one who stole my man,” she had told him. “Do you want him back?” Jean-Louis had asked in return. She had burst out laughing, then kissed him and said, “I hope you’ve been able to teach him a thing or two in bed, God help you.” It was Krista who had offered the weekend package at a ridiculously low rate, just for them.

“That bastard did it on purpose,” Jean-Louis muttered under his breath and bit his lip against the sting of the hot water.

“Who did what?” asked Kerrie. She was wearing a thoroughly knowing smirk on her face as she adjusted the straps on her bikini and leaned back against the pulsating jets. They were both aching from a whole day on the slopes and the heat and massage of the water felt absolutely sinful.

Jean-Louis eyed her flawless skin and wondered what it was about James that made him act like a wild animal in bed. Did James attack all his lovers like they were some kind of juicy steak or was it just him that James set upon so ravenously? “Doesn’t Stephanie, you know, put her mouth on you?”

Kerrie’s smile was almost a leer as she took a sip of mineral water. “Yeah, she puts her mouth on me. Wouldn’t you like to know where?”

He smiled back at her. “I think I know where.”

An hour later he showed her just where he could put his mouth on her to drive her wild. It had been so very long that he had gone without it, not just the taste and scent and feel of another person besides James, but the mystery behind it, the slow discovery, the not knowing of what to expect until it was revealed. It felt unbelievably liberating.

“Wait,” Kerrie said. They were at it for the third time and he was close to the edge again. “Don’t come yet. I want to measure you.” She reached for her pocketbook and pulled out her phone and a rolled up paper tape measure from Ikea.

“Are you kidding me?” He stared incredulously as she measured his length and girth. “You carry that around with you to…what? Measure cocks?”

“No, silly. Stephanie and I are renovating the powder room and we’re still trying to find the perfect sink and cabinet. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find one small enough to fit into a narrow space.” She typed the measurements into her phone and then took a photo of his erection.

“And is a picture of my cock going to help with the bathroom reno?”

“No, but it will help me find the right dildo. I’m going to try to get one just like your penis for Steph to use on me. Wouldn’t that be a nice birthday present to myself?”

“I suppose. I never know what to get James for his birthday.”

“How about one of those sexy photo portraits where you’re posing like a centerfold and it’s all soft focus and warm lighting. You know what I mean?”

“Where in God’s name do you get these ideas?”

Kerrie shrugged nonchalantly. “I’m Dutch. I have four cousins who make a killing in Amsterdam…mostly tourists, of course. I usually see them once a year when I go back to visit and, well, shit, why is a nice French boy like you so prudish?”

“No, no, it’s not that. I just don’t want to give James something that will encourage that sort of thing. He already fucks me way too often.”

Kerrie let out a full-throated laugh. “Maybe you should take turns with him then.” The instant look of horror on Jean-Louis’s face stopped her from elaborating on her suggestion. “What? He’s too pathetically, insecurely macho to bottom for you? Figures.”

“Yes, well, the idea of topping him really doesn’t appeal to me either.”

“Why not? He’s got a hot body.”

“Not my type for that. I like someone shaped like you.” He reached out and caressed her slender frame, the gentle curves of her shoulder, breasts, hips. “I like them to be a work of art, something beautiful and worthy of being worshipped, something meant to be placed on a pedestal and admired.” He bent over her and traced his tongue around a nipple, sucked on it and smiled as he felt it harden in his mouth.

“You’ve had it before? Your ‘type’?”

“Yes,” he sighed. “I’ve had it, more than once…and lost every one of them.”

The look of regret and sorrow in his eyes caught her by surprise. She didn’t think he was at such loose ends, especially since he always talked of James to her and she had believed that Jean-Louis loved him despite all the sarcasm and eye-rolling. Now, though, she wondered if the only reason he was with James was because of the children. So she asked him, “If it weren’t for the kids, would you be with him?”

He hesitated for a moment, the pain of a distant memory ghosting across his face. “No,” he said, “I probably wouldn’t. But I’m glad that I am.” Then he rolled over and made love to Kerrie once more.

***

Andy stood at the bar cutting lemons and limes into wedges, shaking his head all the while. “I cannot fucking believe you let him go with that woman. On Valentine’s Day weekend, too! We could have really used his help here, you know.”

“Are you trying to make things better or worse for me?” James grumbled. It was ten in the morning and he was scrubbing the tables. “At least he helped out during the Super Bowl.” Super Bowl Sunday was always a crazy night at the bar and absolutely exhausting for the staff. Jean-Louis had split his time with Andy mixing and pouring drinks out front and with Sal back in the kitchen, getting the food out. The extra pair of hands had been a godsend and James was grateful. As much as James hated the idea of giving up Valentine’s Day with Jean-Louis, he had to work at the bar anyway and Valentine’s Day wasn’t exactly a winning holiday for him. James had broken up with his girlfriend Krista on a Valentine’s Day; he’d given Jean-Louis a ring—what was now his wedding band—on a Valentine’s Day that ended in a huge argument; he’d found out on a Valentine’s Day that the mother of his unborn twins would likely give them away; and now Jean-Louis was off doing the nasty with someone else on a Valentine’s Day. Christ, what he’d give to sink that holiday to the bottom of the ocean!

But James didn’t interfere this time. What good would it do? He had learned long ago, the hard way, that no amount of begging, threatening, or screaming would convince Jean-Louis to do the right thing, the decent thing. So he let him go on that “ski trip” with Kerrie, nothing more than a thinly veiled excuse to cheat on him with a woman who…whatever. It hurt too much to even think about it. He texted Jean-Louis only once—to make sure he had arrived safely at the resort in Aspen—and left it at that. James’s ex-girlfriend Krista had invited Jean-Louis and his “friend” to have dinner with her and her husband at the resort and had promised James a call afterwards. James looked at his watch. The dinner would have been last night. He was eating a fried bologna, cheese, and pickle sandwich when she called at noon.

“Hey.” James tried not to sound like some keyed-up psychopath. “How’d the dinner go?” 

“Great!” Krista laughed her breathy cheerleader’s laugh. “We had a wonderful time. Wish you’d been there, ha ha ha.”

There was nothing sarcastic in her tone of voice and that made James cringe. He should have never asked her to report back to him. This was going to be bad, but he went ahead and asked anyway. “So, am I imagining things or—”

“Oh, no,” Krista interrupted, “you’re not imagining things. Those two are definitely getting it on. You should have seen them: all freshly scrubbed and looking totally fucked out. Yeah. Definitely.” She wasn’t trying to be overtly cruel to James—they were friends now, after all—but Krista was certainly going to enjoy this unexpected payback. At the time of her break-up with James, the pain had been one-sided: he had cheated on her behind her back and committed the even more hurtful act of falling in love with someone else. It had been so humiliating for her, but she didn’t blame Jean-Louis for the crash-and-burn of her relationship with James. She knew that it was James who had pursued Jean-Louis, kept at him like a dog on a bone, and the fact that Jean-Louis was now torturing James in ways she couldn’t was giving Krista belated satisfaction. Let James have a taste of his own medicine, she thought. Serves him right. “You better get your act together, big boy, ‘cause your honey’s little playmate is sipping on his nectar.”

That was just the sort of news he was expecting, but James threw his phone across the room anyway in a fit of anger and broke the framed and signed photograph of Peyton Manning hanging on the opposite wall. Now he had to clean up the shattered glass. And buy a new phone. He swept up the mess and wondered if Kerrie’s girlfriend Stephanie was okay with the idea of their partners fucking each other. He hoped Stephanie was seething mad and would slap the shit out of Kerrie when she got back home, though he doubted that women ever did that sort of thing. What he really wanted to do was break Jean-Louis in half and it scared him a little to think what was going to happen when he got home later that night. Jean-Louis would be back from Aspen, likely be in bed asleep already since James never finished at the bar until past one in the morning on Sundays. Jean-Louis would be up early for work the next day; perhaps they’d have a few words over breakfast. Yeah. The fewer the words the better, James mused.

When he finally did get home, it was almost two and James was dead tired. Jean-Louis’s car was in the drive; so was Rosa’s, the children’s former live-in nanny and now frequent sitter. Rosa lived with her daughter Luisa’s family in neighboring Aurora, but she watched the kids whenever James was working late and Jean-Louis was out of town. James had first hired Rosa when the twins were infants and the children had grown up with her. She was a part of the family and had use of the guesthouse whenever she wanted. James noticed the kitchen light was still on in the guesthouse when he got out of his SUV so he knocked on the front door. Rosa was in her sixties and often had trouble sleeping.

“Everything alright?” asked James.

“Si, si, everything ees good. You come in?” Rosa had Fritzel in her arms. The dog only seemed to listen to her.

“No, I’m going to bed. Thanks. Just making sure you’re okay.” He gave her a kiss and turned to go to the main house.

“Meester James.”

Even after years of living in the States, her Venezuelan accent had never gone away. James found it endlessly entertaining. “Yeah?”

“Be nice, okay? Remember why you marry him.” Rosa patted Fritzel on the head. She knew exactly what James was thinking. “Remember what ees important. Ees better to love than to hate.”

He gave Rosa another kiss and nodded wordlessly. She liked to boss him around and he allowed it because it was amusing. She didn’t hold back from bossing Jean-Louis around either, or the children. It was all good, done with humor and affection, but tonight it made James want to cry. Had they been married for over five years already? He trudged to the main house, checked on the kids, then went into the master bedroom. Jean-Louis was asleep but he had left the bathroom light on and the door ajar for James. For some reason, it made him think of Jean-Louis’s phone calls to him during the weekdays. He would call James from the office once during the day to exchange a few, brief words.

“Everything okay?” Jean-Louis would ask.

“Yeah, great. How’s it going for you?” James would reply.

“Fine. I’ll see you later then.”

It was always the same thing, or minor variations thereof, yet it filled James with happiness, the comfort of knowing that Jean-Louis would come home to him each evening was enough to make James’s heart clench in his chest. He would never forget the times when he didn’t have this kind of certainty, when the periods of separation stretched into months rather than hours. Oh, how James loved him so! He didn’t have the erudition, the words, the means to articulate how he felt. He could only show Jean-Louis through his actions, so clumsy and far from the mark, that his own life held no meaning without him. Even the children, as much as James loved them…well, he would sacrifice each one of them if that were what it took to keep Jean-Louis. He showered quickly and slipped quietly into bed beside him. Jean-Louis startled and stirred, half-asleep.

“Didn’t mean to wake you,” James whispered.

“Hmm…”

James moved closer and Jean-Louis nestled against him, back to chest, his warm body fitting so perfectly into James as James wrapped his arm around him and kissed the nape of his neck. He breathed him in, his lovely scent, and let all his heartache float away.

 

 


	11. Cracking Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A road trip to James's childhood vacation spot results in an unexpected meeting of former lovers.

 

James peeled into the parking lot of the Cracker Barrel and shouted at the man lying prone across the back seat of his Chevy Tahoe. “Wake up, Cinderella! It’s time for some freaking biscuits and gravy!”

Jean-Louis ignored the yelling and rolled onto his other side, only to accidentally inhale a pile of stale Oreo crumbs that had settled into the nooks and crannies of the seat cushion. He sat up coughing and wheezing and wiped angrily at his face. It wouldn’t do to give a critique on the state of James’s filthy car at this point because it was only going to get worse. By the time he climbed out of the back seat James had already disappeared into the restaurant. Jean-Louis decided to take advantage of the peaceful interlude by smoking a cigarette first and assessing his surroundings. Okay, where the hell were they? He glanced at his phone and saw that they were stopped somewhere in Iowa near the Illinois border. They had been driving for hours, on their way to Traverse City, Michigan for their annual family vacation. With Benjamin on mandatory arm rest and unable to play baseball over the summer, the kids had flown out at the end of the school year in June to visit with James’s parents, Peter and Laura, in Grosse Pointe, James’s childhood hometown situated four and half hours southeast of Traverse City. They—along with James’s brother Ted and his wife Meredith and their sons Bobby and Kyle—would all meet up in Traverse City after July Fourth for a month-long vacation in rented lakefront cabins, a tradition in James’s family since his early childhood. Jean-Louis had work commitments, however, and wasn’t able to leave Denver until mid-July. James had stayed behind because he insisted on driving out to Michigan with him. 

“Road trips are an _American_ thing. You French wouldn’t understand it. Your dinky little country is too small for road trips,” James had told him the first time they made the journey together, as if it were a competition in tedium. “Besides, it’s only nineteen hours from Denver to Traverse City. Piece of cake.”

Nineteen hours turned out to be more like twenty-six hours, especially when the kids were small and they needed to make frequent stops, but Jean-Louis had long given up on reasoning with him. Even the memory of last year’s trip didn’t deter James, when they had had a flat tire, then hours of bumper-to-bumper traffic from a ten-car pile-up outside of Chicago, then a torrential downpour in Nebraska on the way back to Denver that threatened to wash the road away along with all the vehicles on it. At some point on that god awful journey, Jean-Louis had screamed, “I swear we are stuck in the goddamn motherfucking _Odyssey_!” He had sunk to a new low. Before hooking up with James, he wouldn’t have sworn so readily, but now the expletives just rolled off his tongue unimpeded by thought or common decency. He was thankful that the kids were asleep in the back seat.

James had gripped the steering wheel with both hands, brows furrowed, but his voice was calm. “We’re in a Tahoe, sweetheart, not some un-American rice burner.”

“What?” Jean-Louis had been exhausted and was now dumbfounded.

“Baby, after all this time, you still don’t know the difference between a Chevy and a Honda?” James had chided. “Figures.”

“I wasn’t talking about—”

“Let’s see…” James had interrupted, “…who but the _French_ would slap together a tin can with some rubber bands and call it a car?”

Jean-Louis hadn’t taken that blatant insult to French automotive ingenuity lying down. “The 2CV was designed for _practicality_. Besides, I wasn’t talking about cars, you imbecile. I was talking about Homer. Didn’t you ever read him in school?”

James had snorted with disdain. “Homer? Why the fuck would I _read_ him when I can watch _The Simpsons_ whenever I want?”

Jean-Louis had nearly suffered an aneurysm from that exchange. So far, on this trip, they had argued for at least an hour over what was the better movie: _Dr. No_ or _Goldfinger_? _Grand Prix_ or _Le Mans_? _Alien_ or _Aliens_? _Predator_ or _Tremors_? Then they had moved on to bands and singers: Beyoncé or Rihanna? Van Halen or AC/DC? Frank Sinatra or Serge Gainsbourg? Kraftwerk or Daft Punk? This was what James considered to be acceptable road trip fodder and something that added to the enjoyment of monotonous driving. And now James was going to make him eat at yet another Cracker Barrel. No self-respecting Frenchman would willingly eat at a Cracker Barrel. Jean-Louis thought wistfully of the apple popovers his grandmother Claudette would make for him and Charlotte when they were children. His heart ached at such sweet memories.

“About time!” James grumbled when Jean-Louis seated himself at the table. “I ordered for you and you’re going to eat it and love it.”

Jean-Louis merely blinked at him and took a sip of weak, lukewarm coffee. He made a face and pushed the clunky ceramic mug away.

“Don’t,” warned James. “I’m so hungry I could eat my own goddamn shoes.”

Jean-Louis imagined James eating a pair of his size sixteen shoes and broke into laughter. “I dare you.”

“Didn’t I say ‘don’t’?”

“Fine. What did you order for me?”

“I told you already: biscuits and gravy. And some of those stewed apples.”

Oh god, Jean-Louis hated those stewed apples. How Cracker Barrel was famous for that overly-sugary concoction was beyond his powers of comprehension. Perhaps James was trying to punish him, trying to get a rise out of him so he could turn around and accuse him of being a snob. He made a silent promise to himself: he would eat what James had ordered without complaint because James had agreed to forgo Tommy John surgery to repair Benjamin’s UCL injury. It had taken a lot for James to back down from that. He had such high hopes for Benjamin—a dream that involved major league baseball and potential Hall of Fame greatness for his son—but now that was all deferred while they played the waiting game. James had always been an impatient man; sitting on his hands was never a strategy he would have found acceptable. Jean-Louis knew him well enough to be grateful for this concession from him, but after this meal, all bets were off.

***

Traverse City in July meant the Cherry Festival, bone-chilling water in the bay, mosquitoes, and rink time at Centre Ice Arena where the Detroit Red Wings held their training camp in the fall. It was one of the many routines that James had established through the years and this year he brought Jean-Louis with him. Benjamin wasn’t allowed to play since his arm was still healing from the injury suffered during playoffs and Jean-Louis had assured James that he could skate just fine. He had skated during his year of rehabilitation in Zürich after coming out of his coma and his own cousin, Pierre, had played for the ZSC Lions, Switzerland’s professional ice hockey team. James had smiled smugly, proud that Jean-Louis was willing to put himself out there with the big guys, and assured him, “Don’t worry, baby. I’ll keep an eye out for you.”

It was the least James could do. Jean-Louis wasn’t small or fragile, but he was slim and…so beautiful. James didn’t want anyone to mar him, scar him, leave an indelible mark on him except himself. He had almost lost him so many times, almost lost him for good, and it was always in the front of his mind no matter how hard he pushed it away. To have him, hold him, protect him—it gave James purpose in life after a career in pro football where he had spilled his guts in every game. The NFL had demanded it and he had given it willingly. But now, he had so much still to give, and he would give it all to the most exquisite, infuriating creature he had ever known. Jean-Louis was so cavalier about life, his own at least, so it was up to James to clear the path for him, mow down anyone who would do him harm.

That afternoon, though, James had almost come to blows with a stranger. It was only an impromptu game with the locals and it had begun innocently enough. One of them had brought along a visiting friend, a hulking Swiss dude who might as well have played in the NHL, he was that good. The man was as big as James and looked like some Teutonic god, with hair a natural platinum blond, eyes as grey as a snowy winter sky, and features chiseled out of granite. Jean-Louis could skate as well as any of them, was nimble and crafty on the ice, though he had none of the bulk of the others. This foreigner, someone named Mathias something-or-other, kept checking Jean-Louis into the boards, not enough to knock him down but enough to make James take notice. After the third time, James decided to give this Mathias a taste of his own medicine.

“Lay off of him,” James snarled into his face as he pinned him with an elbow to the neck, “or I’ll break your fucking legs.”

The man had looked with amusement at James and merely laughed.

In the locker room after the game, James had come back from the showers to find this same man leaning right over Jean-Louis as he stood clad only in a towel wrapped around his waist. He could hear them speaking in French as he approached, and as this Mathias fellow straightened up to turn towards him, James saw that he had a thick coat of blond hair, almost as dense as an animal’s pelt, covering his ripped chest and abdomen, his forearms and legs. The look of awe on Jean-Louis’s face made James’s heart sink. His own chest was fairly smooth and it suddenly became sickeningly obvious to James that Jean-Louis actually liked this man’s hirsuteness. What could James do except go against Jean-Louis’s insistence on discretion.

“Hey, baby,” James said, laying a proprietary hand on Jean-Louis’s shoulder. Then he looked at Mathias and said, “Why don’t we both put some clothes on so we can take this outside?”

Mathias glanced sideways at Jean-Louis and smiled. “What’s the problem?” he asked James. “I was just apologizing for the…rough play.” He looked back at Jean-Louis. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“No,” Jean-Louis mumbled.

When James saw that Jean-Louis wouldn’t look him in the eye, he realized that all that body checking earlier was just some kind of foreplay, that maybe they were thinking of taking it further, somewhere that involved a bed in a hotel room instead of an ice rink. Goddamn the two of them!

“You see?” Mathias said with a friendly smirk. “No harm, no foul.”

James couldn’t believe the balls on this guy. “You think it’s funny? You think it’s amusing to take something that’s not yours?”

Mathias glanced from James to Jean-Louis, who sat hunched over on the bench in front of the lockers staring at the floor. “This one is yours?” asked Mathias. He gave a loud laugh and clapped James on the shoulder. “You’ve made me a jealous man, you lucky bastard.” Then he bent down and whispered something in French to Jean-Louis, flashed another smug smile at James, turned and walked to the showers before James could punch him in the face.

“This is the last time I’m taking you anywhere!” James had seethed in the car as they headed back to the cabin. “No more hockey for you!” But he knew he was being ridiculous.

“Fine,” Jean-Louis had replied. He looked straight out the windshield at the road ahead.

“What? Don’t I get some kind of apology?”

“What for? I didn’t do anything.”

“Would you have, if I weren’t there to stop you?”

“What do you want me to say? Yes? No?” Jean-Louis lit up a cigarette even though he knew James didn't allow smoking in his car.

“The truth!”

“You already know the truth.”

“I want to hear you say it.” James gulped, regretting the demand already.

Jean-Louis opened the window a crack, tapped the ash off the end of his cigarette. “Okay. Yes. Are you happy now?”

“Fucking hell!” James screamed. He slammed his fists onto the steering wheel. “What is fucking wrong with you? Why do you have to do this? Why can’t I be enough for you?” He pulled over to the side of the road and dry-heaved. Jean-Louis said nothing, just took another drag on his cigarette. Up ahead was a sign for Grand Traverse Pie Company. "We should pick up a cherry pie for dessert," James muttered in defeat.

Jean-Louis reached out and touched James's shoulder, ran his fingers down his arm and circled his wrist. "It's nothing, James. It's all water under the bridge." He leaned over and kissed James's cheek. "And...I like cherry pie."

 

 

 


	12. What Goes Up, Must Come Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A rocky ride back to Denver is just the start of more trouble down the road.

 

During the car trip back from Traverse City, Marcel complained of a sore throat, headache, and stiff neck.

“I told you not to spend so much time swimming,” James chided as he drove. “That water never gets warm. You should have just kayaked.” He cast a glance into the rearview mirror at Marcel, who looked drained despite his summer tan. Chloe was holding him to her chest and kissing his cheeks. “Stop that, Chloe,” James told her. “He’s not a baby anymore.”

Chloe gave Marcel an extra loud smooch on his forehead in response. “That’s what _you_ think,” she shot back. She was still angry at her father for making her go to Traverse City in the first place when she had wanted to stay in Denver and spend time with her current boyfriend, Brad. To get back at James, she had started smoking behind his back and had even made out with some of the local boys in some bizarre attempt at punishing him. The truth was, she would be the one getting punished if he found out, but her sixteen-year-old brain deemed her actions to be rightful payback. And nobody, especially her father, was going to tell her she couldn’t baby Marcel. Marcel was hers, her creation, her sweet soul to shape into something spectacular.

Benjamin merely shook his head at her with a wry grin. It was his way of warning her not to pick a fight with their father in a battle that had no end in sight. For his part, Benjamin was more than happy to spend this July doing nothing for once; no serious training and conditioning, nothing beyond a thirty-minute jog on the treadmill each morning at the local gym with his father, then sit-ups and leg presses. James insisted that he at least do the bare minimum workout allowed by his physician and Benjamin complied, though he did not share in his father’s obsession with weight training. And as much as Benjamin loved competitive sports—as both player and spectator—he was laid back by nature, too laid back in James’s opinion.

“Don’t waste your talent,” James always reminded him. “Work hard, play hard, be passionate about it or don’t do it at all.”

The trouble was, James didn’t treat it as a choice for Benjamin to make. He treated it as an imperative and Benjamin was just too lazy to see it that way. And getting lazier by the minute. He knew his father wanted him to excel in baseball but, at sixteen, he was itching to try other things, like sleeping in late and watching porn all day or just hanging out with his girlfriend at the movie theater. In many ways, he was supremely grateful for his sister running interference for him. If she weren’t such a constant source of irritation to James, the man would probably be harping on him 24/7 instead of on Chloe.

“Let me have him.” Benjamin reached over and pulled Marcel onto his side of the backseat and let him lean his head against his shoulder. He threw Chloe a scowl that said, “Don’t rile Dad up!”

At the next rest stop, Marcel vomited in the parking lot as James gassed up the SUV. Jean-Louis placed a palm to his forehead and cheeks and frowned.

“He has a fever,” Jean-Louis told James. Then he went into the convenience store and bought a bottle of Tylenol. They had just made it to the Nebraska border and still had a good seven hours to Denver if they drove without stopping.

“You think it’s a stomach bug?” asked James.

Jean-Louis shook his head. “He would have thrown up sooner.” This was the second day on the road going at a leisurely pace, but now he wished they would have driven with more purpose. Marcel, who never had headaches and was rarely ever ill, was in terrible discomfort. The stiff neck worried Jean-Louis. “Let’s just take turns driving. I want to get him home as soon as possible.”

James normally did all the driving on road trips. He didn’t trust Jean-Louis to operate machinery with all the pot-smoking he did, but this time he agreed without argument. His spouse was loose in his oversight of the children but he wasn’t irresponsible when it came to their health. “Okay. We drive straight through, then.”

By the time they reached Denver, Marcel was moaning in agony, weak and unable to move. They drove straight to the emergency room at their hospital. Two hours later, Marcel was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis and started immediately on a course of antibiotics and corticosteroids.

“He’s going to be alright,” James assured that night. They were all exhausted and relieved, glad to be home at last, in bed and looking forward to the comforts of routine. “He’s a tough little kid.”

“Yes,” Jean-Louis murmured. He thought of the early days of their marriage, when Marcel would often crawl into their bed in the middle of the night and sleep wedged between them. Before Jean-Louis had returned to the States, James had let the boy sleep in his bed after he had outgrown the crib and it had become a habit hard to break. Jean-Louis had been the interloper, but it was Marcel who had slowly weaned himself off the need to stay close to James; they had never had to forcefully remove him from their bed. It had felt strangely empty at first to roll over and not bump up against his small warm body, and that empty feeling washed over Jean-Louis again that night and made his heart sink. Marcel was fourteen now, at an age when a boy often experiences so many things for the first time: love perhaps, yearning, things that rendered one vulnerable to suffering. It made Jean-Louis afraid for him. Marcel was his son, his biological son, and the fear that had always crouched in the corner of his mind came forward into the light: had he passed on some genetic weakness? Jean-Louis had been diagnosed with the same cancer that had killed his own father, even though the disease was not something that could be inherited supposedly. Still, it worried him. What had he passed on to his son? Had he doomed him in some way? He must have sounded unconvincing because James squeezed him tighter.

“Don’t worry, baby.” James kissed Jean-Louis’s shoulder, the back of his neck. “I won’t let anything happen to him. You know that, don’t you?”

Jean-Louis turned around to face him, looked into James’s eyes, and was grateful. “Je sais.” _I know_. James was many things, good and bad, but Jean-Louis never doubted James’s commitment to the kids, all of them, even Marcel, who wasn’t even…but he was, wasn’t he? He was James’s son, as much as or perhaps more than Marcel was his own biological son. Thank god, thought Jean-Louis. “I know. I know he’ll be with you to the end. When I’m long gone—”

“Don’t say that.” James kissed him to shut him up.  “I won’t let anything happen to you, either. You’re tired. We’re all tired. Go to sleep.” James kissed him again and pulled him closer to his chest. “If you want…next year…we can do something else. We don’t have to do Traverse City. Okay?” He caressed Jean-Louis’s back and tried to calm his own wildly beating heart.

***

The next morning, it all came out. They were in the kitchen at breakfast trying to figure out how Marcel could have gotten sick. They had all eaten the same foods at mealtimes and no one else had fallen ill, they had all swam in the bay, although not as much as Marcel had. Benjamin, though, was looking mighty guilty after Jean-Louis asked if Marcel had gone around kissing strangers. He said it to be facetious, but Benjamin’s face dropped. Marcel was still upstairs sleeping and Benjamin didn’t want to betray his little brother, especially if he implicated himself in the mess.

“Ben,” James prodded. “You got something to say? If you know something, you better speak up.”

Chloe sat up with interest. She had spent most of her vacation time entertaining herself with the local boys and hadn’t seen much of her brothers except at meals. Her two cousins, Bobby and Kyle, were immature teenagers interested only in fart jokes and video games, but Benjamin and Marcel got along well with them and had hung out with them every day.

“Yeah, well,” Benjamin said nervously, “we were just fooling around.”

James crossed his arms over his chest. “Who?”

“Me, Bobby, and Kyle.”

“When?”

“When you and Papa were at the ice rink playing hockey.”

Now Jean-Louis was looking guilty. “Go on,” James said.

“There were these two girls hanging out on the beach…Bobby and Kyle knew them so we went over and started talking to them…they were kinda hot so…we dared them to make out with Marcel.”

“No!” Chloe sucked in a breath but James held up his hand to stop her from interjecting further.

“Was Marcel with you guys?” asked James.

Benjamin shook his head. “No. He was in the water catching crayfish. But we pointed him out to the girls and they thought he was cute and all and…well…they did it, they made out with him.” He looked sheepishly from his Dad to his Papa. “Marcel didn’t even fight back. I mean, I think he was kind of surprised, but then…he looked like he was having fun. There was definitely some tongue action going on.”

Chloe was outraged. “Ben! I can’t believe you told those two skanks to mouth-rape Marcel! I am going to _kill_ you!”

“We were just trying to help him out, you know?” Benjamin replied in defense. “He’s never kissed a girl before and...now he has. He’s kissed _two_ girls so, yeah, isn’t that a good thing?”

“He’s fourteen, you moron!” Chloe punched Benjamin in the arm. “He’s just a baby!”

“What are you talking about?” Benjamin protested. “You’ve been making out with boys since—”

She punched him in the face this time and gave him a bloody nose. “Shut up, you jerk. This is all your fault. Marcel could have died! Right, Papa? Isn’t that what the doctor said?”

“Don't get all melodramatic, Chloe,” warned James, “and Ben, whatever it is you think you're doing, don’t do it again. Jesus Christ, th' fuck is wrong with you kids?”

At this point, Marcel wandered into the kitchen, having awoken from all the commotion. “What’s going on?” he rasped, still in a daze, his hair wildly disheveled.

“Those two skanky bitches, that’s what!” Chloe jumped off the stool and wrapped her arms around Marcel. “They were full of diseases, Marcel. Don’t you ever kiss another girl again!”

Jean-Louis poured himself another cup of coffee. He honestly couldn't face the reality unfolding in front of him. It was just sibling shenanigans, but what the hell was Chloe really doing with Marcel? She had made herself the boy's keeper from early on, mothered and smothered him with affection, but what else was there? God, he needed a cigarette. Jean-Louis took his cup of coffee and made a beeline for his smoking lounge, closed the door as another argument erupted in the kitchen. Next week he had to fly out to Bern for four days of meetings, and then he planned on visiting his brother Ernst in Zürich for another two days before flying back to Denver. Marcel would be well on his way to recovery by the time he had to leave for Switzerland and at least they now had some idea of how he might have contracted the illness. It put his mind at ease.

Jean-Louis lit up in the relative peace of his sanctuary and sent a text: la semaine prochaine à Zurich?

In a few seconds, Mathias texted back: je serai la

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short chapter. Too many things going on right now.
> 
> Also, is this fic making any sense at all? I just read over a few chapters and I'm thinking WTF is this? Drop a comment if you think I should go on with this.
> 
> la semaine prochaine à Zurich? = next week in Zürich?
> 
> je serai la = I'll be there


	13. Backwards and Forwards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reconnecting with a lover from the past brings Jean-Louis closer to James.

 

“You actually married him?” Mathias was still bewildered. “Unbelievable.” He looked across the table at Jean-Louis and shook his head. They were both in Zürich in early August—Mathias to see his ex-wife and two children before they left for vacation and Jean-Louis in town to visit with his brother Ernst, whose wife Marie and three children were already in Arbois. Mathias still kept an apartment not far from his ex-wife Brigitte, who had married very well after her divorce from him fifteen years ago. They had remained on amicable terms, even after he had moved to Quebec province to play for the storied Montreal Canadiens after nine years with the ZSC Lions. Mathias had met Jean-Louis through Jean-Louis’s cousin Pierre, who was a defenseman on the Swiss ice hockey team and known for being one of their league’s most brutal enforcers. Mathias had been a left winger and was now happily retired from the sport for the last three years, splitting his time between Quebec and Zürich, his home town. Running into Jean-Louis in Traverse City had been a surprise for both of them, a weirdly serendipitous meeting on ice that had led to this dinner in Zürich two weeks later.

Jean-Louis emptied his wine glass and poured another serving for himself. “I didn’t have much choice. I did it for Marcel.” It was close to fourteen years since he had first hooked up with Mathias. Mathias had been newly divorced and Jean-Louis had been living in his family’s Zürich apartment after coming out of his coma. Pierre had invited Jean-Louis to their practice sessions at the Hallenstadion and then he had started going out with the team for drinks at the local bars. It wasn’t long before he and Mathias were lovers. Mathias had made the first move, openly flirted with him and wouldn’t take no for an answer, just the way Jean-Louis liked it. The sex had been amazingly good, full of easy passion and uncomplicated lust. They both had demons to exorcise, things to forget, and Mathias had been generous in his affection and undemanding in what he expected in return, everything Jean-Louis had needed to set aside his own fear of being alive and very alone. Mathias had listened without judgment, and when Jean-Louis had told him he was going back to the States to retrieve a son, Mathias had let him go with a tender kiss and no bitterness. But he had never imagined Jean-Louis would end up married to the man who had caused him such crushing grief.

Mathias grunted and chewed his broiled salmon, the muscles of his jaw working harder than they needed to because, at the moment, he was downright annoyed. “He seemed like an asshole to me. What did he say: ‘Let’s take this outside’? Asshole, for sure.” He swallowed his mouthful and gulped down his wine, regretting in retrospect the fact that he had walked away from a brawl. His hands clenched into fists reflexively. God, he missed hockey and all the times the gloves had come off on the ice ahead of some serious punching. Putting a permanent dent into James’s face would have been so satisfying. “Are you happy?”

“Yes. No. What does it matter?” Jean-Louis poured another glass of wine for Mathias. “We all do what we have to do. He’s good to me. Better than I am to him.”

There was a low rumble of laughter as Mathias drank deeply. He sat back and gazed unabashedly at Jean-Louis. “You’re still beautiful, Jean-Louis. No…you’re even more beautiful than before.” Jean-Louis had been painfully thin back then, in recovery both mentally and physically, and as lost as a bird in a storm. “I suppose this ridiculous marriage of yours must suit you. Does he know about us?”

“Us?” asked Jean-Louis, more than a little startled. It had been so long ago that they had been together, _known_ each other in the biblical sense; it had been in another life really, what felt like a distant, vaguely grasped dream. Except, he remembered everything—every kiss, every touch, every wrenching orgasm Mathias had pulled out of him, every panted breath which had ended with the name _Mathias_ gasped aloud. “No. Why should I tell him these things? I hurt him enough as it is.”

“Oh?” Mathias’s silver brows lifted in genuine curiosity. “So…you love him then? You? There’s a heart in there somewhere, is there?” When Jean-Louis refused to answer, Mathias smiled gamely. “My angel, love is overrated, isn’t it?” He reached across and palmed Jean-Louis’s shoulder. “Come back to my place tonight, for old time’s sake.” Again, no answer and Mathias slumped back and sighed. “I really wasn’t sure it was you at first. I thought: perhaps? But I wasn’t sure.”

“Is that why you slammed me into the boards three times? To get a better look?” The accusation was leveled with a smile; Jean-Louis couldn’t help it. He had liked Mathias from the start and to meet up with him again like _that_ had been a turn-on. “ _I_ knew it was you across the ice.”

“Hmm, I’m still the same, but you…you’re not. You know what gave you away?” Mathias leaned in and spoke low and quiet. “Your scent. I could smell you when I got you close. That’s how I knew for sure. It wasn’t how you looked.” He closed his eyes and breathed him in. “That scent of yours…” Behind his eyelids he could see Jean-Louis exactly as he had been all those years ago, he could recall the sensation of his body against his own, the heat and smoothness, the sound of his moans, his taste upon his tongue. He opened his eyes and there he was—older, more solid and yet just as ephemeral. The affair had only lasted nine months, and yet it felt like yesterday, the desire was still there, awake, alive, eager. “Come home with me, Jean-Louis. We have so much to talk about.”

They did little talking that night in Mathias’s apartment. They didn’t need words to reconnect when their hands and mouths and cocks were fluent in the languages that needed to be spoken. Mathias was as accomplished a lover as Jean-Louis had remembered, patient and rough at all the right times, the thick hair on his body a rare, intoxicating treat to be savored.

“More, more,” Jean-Louis panted, “don’t stop!” But when he came he screamed out, “James!”

Mathias climaxed right after despite the deflating insult; he was too far gone. “You really know how to make a man feel unwanted,” Mathias complained as he pulled out and rolled onto his back. He wiped a hand across his sweating forehead and half-groaned, half-chuckled. “What did he do to you? Beat you into mindless submission?”

Jean-Louis stared up at the ceiling. James had rarely ever been gentle with him and, when driven to jealous rage, he had done terrible things to him, but it had never been without provocation. Had he wanted it, Jean-Louis wondered, had he wanted James to punish him? And now? Did he deserve more punishment? He got off the bed and cleaned himself up in the bathroom, then went back into the bedroom to dress. “I have to go see my brother,” Jean-Louis said. “He’s expecting me.”

“It’s one-thirty in the morning,” Mathias grumbled. “Come now, stay the night. I didn’t mean anything. Come.” He reached out and clutched Jean-Louis’s arm. “You can go in the morning. Please. I’m sorry.”

The pleading…Mathias could easily overpower him as James had done so many times against his will, but Mathias wasn’t James and it only threw Jean-Louis into more confusion. Why did he even care? Why was he even thinking about James? “I need a drink,” Jean-Louis mumbled. “Give me a drink and I’ll stay.” God. He didn’t want to think, didn’t want to have any awareness of what he was doing. He was a coward, a dishonest, cheating coward. He lit a cigarette and when Mathias came back with two glasses of cognac, Jean-Louis readily accepted the drink and asked hopefully, “Do you have any weed?”

Mathias grinned. “Of course. You know I have everything you need.” He leaned over and kissed him, his fingers carding through Jean-Louis’s hair. “You should really grow your hair out. It’s such a beautiful color. Didn’t you say your sister liked it long? Isn’t that what you told me before?”

Jean-Louis took a long sip, let the silky heat of the liquor burn a path down his throat. “Kiss me,” he whispered, but in his heart he was crying, “Kill me.”

***

“You stood up there and said your vows in front of everyone,” James reminded him. Jean-Louis had just returned from Zürich sporting a brand new hickey on his neck and had admitted, after much hounding on James’s part, to hooking up with an old lover. That this person had been a pro hockey player was particularly galling for James. “Do the words ‘forsaking all others’ mean nothing to you? Or maybe in France it means ‘I get to go on sticking my cock anywhere I want?’ Well, guess what? You’re in fucking America now, and in America, ‘forsaking all others’ means you keep your goddamn dick in your pants until _I_ tell you to let that puppy out!”

Jean-Louis merely continued unpacking his suitcase, a placid smile on his face. “Uh huh, yes, well, you know all about the business of sticking your cock wherever you want.” He took a small white container out of his toiletry bag. “Here, try this. I found it at a kiosk by the train station. It’s a shame Kenzo stopped making this fragrance.” He lifted the front of James’s shirt and sprayed the cologne onto his chest, sniffed deeply, and sighed. “Hmm…heavenly…”

“Are you listening to me?” asked James. “I am so pissed off at you.” And he really was livid, but Jean-Louis was moaning and rubbing his face into his chest now like an animal in heat and it seemed to make perfect sense to put anger aside for the moment.

“Do you want to go on shouting or do you want to fuck me?” asked Jean-Louis.

James was speechless. He let his cock do the talking instead.

For several days, even though it felt like he had drunk a gallon of bleach and the stuff was melting his insides, James refrained from bringing up Jean-Louis’s most recent infidelity again. Then, on their way home from a run to Costco on a Saturday morning a week before Jean-Louis’s forty-first birthday and their thirteenth wedding anniversary, Jean-Louis said in the car, “It won’t happen again.”

James knew exactly what he meant, but he wasn’t about to let it go that easily. “What?” he snapped. “What won’t happen again?” He heard Jean-Louis sigh and shift in the passenger seat, and then an impatient clearing of his throat, but nothing else, no explanation, no apology. “That’s all I get?” James prodded. “You’re not even going to say you’re sorry?”

“Would that help?”

“I don’t know!” James yelled. “You fucking tell _me_. Does saying you’re sorry fix it? Tell me! Tell me it fixes all the shitty things you do to me!”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jean-Louis throw up his hands and then he heard him shout, “Watch the…!”

But it was too late. James had blown through the red light at the intersection and a local electrician’s van plowed into the passenger side of James’s Chevy Tahoe. All six front and side airbags deployed and no one died in either vehicle, thankfully, but Jean-Louis woke up in the hospital with a broken collarbone, fractured cheekbone, three fractured ribs, and a dislocated right shoulder. His right eye looked like a bloody gelatinous orb nestled in a pillow of swollen purple and green flesh. James escaped with a bruised sternum. The driver of the van only suffered mild whiplash, but was thrilled to discover that he had gotten into an accident with a former Denver Bronco and managed to take ten selfies before the police arrived.

“You look terrible,” Jean-Louis muttered when he finally came out of sedation.

James sat in a chair next to his hospital bed, nauseated with guilt and remorse. “Yeah? You think _I_ look like crap? Wait till you get a load of _your_ pretty face.”

“What’s wrong with my face?” Jean-Louis slowly lifted his left hand—his right arm wouldn’t move—and gingerly patted his swollen cheek. “I can’t feel a thing.”

James nodded. “Be glad.” Then he broke down crying.

“Mon dieu. Am I…hideous?” Jean-Louis started laughing hysterically and only managed to stop when he realized that his ribs felt like knives stabbing into his lungs. “I guess I deserve it, don’t I, me and my fucked up face? Does this make you happy, James? Will you forgive me my trespasses, now that I look like Frankenstein’s monster?” 

“Stop it, you asshole. This isn’t funny. And you don’t look like Frankenstein’s monster…more like chopped liver. The doctor says you should heal fine.” James rubbed at his eyes angrily, then wiped the snot off his nose with his shirtsleeve. “You could have been killed. You could have died and it would have been my fault.”

“Well, you _have_ tried and failed so many other times…”

“I told you this isn’t funny!” He would have wrung Jean-Louis’s neck if he weren’t already in such pitiful shape. Instead, James heaved a heavy sigh. Seeing him pulled out of the mangled passenger side door—limp, bloodied, and unconscious—had made James realize that the only thing that mattered going forward was that Jean-Louis _live_. His own anguish was vanity. “I’m not fighting with you about this anymore,” James told him. “I’m done with it. I can’t control you, I can’t make you listen to me, I can’t make you love me…”

“That’s not true. I do love you. You _made_ me love you, you did. You taught me love. I’m just a lousy student.” Jean-Louis reached out for James’s hand, which he found and squeezed tightly. “Don’t let me go. I will never love anyone else but you.” And then he wept with sadness and joy, afloat on a river of morphine.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please assume that when Jean-Louis is speaking with Mathias, or with the kids when he’s alone with them, he is speaking in French. I’m too lazy to write it all out in French and then provide translations. Plus my French is simply atrocious.


	14. A Bitter Pill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean-Louis recovers from the accident but he's not the only one in need of healing.

 

Under ordinary circumstances the scene would have been embarrassing, but the staff working the ward on the fifth floor were used to the occasional emotional outburst. Those sitting at the nurse’s station could hear the keening cries through the closed door of the room down the hall and didn’t bat an eyelash.

“I hate you!” Chloe screamed at her father in the hospital room, right in front of Benjamin and Marcel who were mute with shock at the sight of their Papa, and right in front of the nurse inserting a new IV needle into Jean-Louis’s wrist. “I hate you more than anything in the world! Look at what you did to him! _Look_ at him!” She wailed and beat her fists against James’s chest as he held her close. Her beautiful Papa…broken, ruined. She couldn’t bear to look at him, not when he looked like roadkill. “How could you do this to him?” she sobbed into her father’s shirt. “How could you?”

James had warned the kids beforehand but they had insisted on seeing Jean-Louis two days after the accident, as soon as he was allowed to have brief visits from immediate family. It wasn’t going well at all. James was prepared for a horrible reaction; he was even prepared for the blame because he already blamed himself for it, but to hear his own daughter level such unvarnished hatred towards him was a bitter pill to swallow. What could he do except swallow it and bear the pain of Chloe’s fists on his bruised sternum? It didn’t occur to Chloe that her father might be suffering too and in need of sympathy and compassion. It was just as well, James mused to himself, because everything she was saying to him now he had already told himself repeatedly over the last forty-eight hours. The kids had never seen Jean-Louis looking anything less than perfect, but James had seen him at death’s door in the past and _this_ was better in every way because at least the doctors had said that Jean-Louis would recover. James could endure another beatdown from Chloe as long as his baby came home to him.

Jean-Louis was drifting in and out of consciousness, in more agony today than yesterday and in need of heavy doses of painkillers, but he heard every word Chloe said and, for the first time, he wanted very badly to shield James from her wrath, but was utterly helpless to do so. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open for more than a few seconds at a time, just long enough to make out the faces of the children and of James, but Chloe’s voice was loud and shrill and so full of fury and anguish, it cut straight through the opiate fog and lodged like arrows in his heart. What hurt even more than Chloe’s words was James’s silence. He wasn’t even fighting back, wasn’t even defending himself. He just stood there and took it, let her cut him to pieces. He heard Benjamin say, “That’s not fair, sis. Dad didn’t do it on purpose. It was just an accident,” but that only made Chloe sob louder. He felt a warm hand on his arm. With great effort, he opened his eyes and saw Marcel smiling down at him, mouth trembling, his face wet with tears, Benjamin standing behind him holding his shoulders steady.

“Pourquoi pleures-tu?” asked Jean-Louis. _Why are you crying?_ “Tu ne pleures jamais.” _You never cry_.

“Mais je suis heureux, Papa,” Marcel insisted. _But I’m happy, Papa._ “Vraiment.” _Truly_.

Jean-Louis reached out for Benjamin and gripped his hand. “Ne laisse pas ta soeur le tuer. C’est mon travail.” _Don’t let your sister kill him. That’s my job_.

***

A week later, they celebrated Jean-Louis’s forty-first birthday in the hospital with a cake that Marcel made with Chloe’s help (Benjamin’s contribution was cleaning up the mess afterwards)—a molded genoise sponge cake filled with a rich lemon custard and decorated with thinly sliced lemons cooked in syrup. It was a cake that Charlotte used to make for Jean-Louis, a variation on the classic French Rosace à l’orange, but made with lemons instead of oranges. Jean-Louis wept when he saw the cake, his face less swollen but the bruises even darker than they had been before. He didn’t want to cry, not in front of the children and especially not in front of Chloe, who was still unwilling to forgive James for the accident.

“She’s still not talking to me,” James sighed. He had sent all three kids to the cafeteria to bring back some coffee, and some plastic forks and napkins, which he had forgotten to pack. The sharp edge of Chloe’s anger was dull now—James could handle _that_ —but he was unsettled, like something had shifted, changed, but what? He felt caught in a nightmare, that one where he was walking on unfamiliar terrain, and each step carried the threat of the ground giving way to some bottomless pit. He had planned on taking Jean-Louis to Costa Rica for their wedding anniversary, but that trip was shot to shit for obvious reasons. Luckily, he had bought insurance when he had booked the trip months ago. Ah, what did it matter? Everything seemed completely fucked up, his life suddenly unraveling in ways he couldn’t quite see but could only _feel_. Was it uncertainty? Fear? Fear of losing Jean-Louis was always there but this wasn’t as clear-cut as that old worry. James didn’t like it one bit, this mysterious, amorphous unease twisting in his stomach and keeping him awake at night. “I miss you, baby.” James slumped forward in his chair and rested his head against Jean-Louis’s left side, the side that wasn’t smashed. “It’s been thirteen years today.”

“I remember. Happy anniversary. Husband.” Jean-Louis laughed. He had never used that word to refer to James and it sounded absolutely ridiculous saying it aloud. “Merde. So fucking hilarious.”

“What?” James turned his head to face Jean-Louis, a sheepish grin curling across his lips. “I’m finally your husband. Is that what’s so funny? What the hell was I before?”

In answer, Jean-Louis ran his fingers through James’s hair, scratching lightly against the back of his scalp, something he’d often do after their lovemaking when James hadn’t yet pulled away from him, when they were still connected, abuzz with endorphins. It was affection at its most intimate and pure, something done without any thought, only instinctual drive, and it was so out of place in that hospital room with the beeping monitors and starched sheets and smell of antiseptic cleaners. “God,” replied Jean-Louis, his voice a whisper, “and the Devil. I’ve told you before.”

“Have you?” James gazed into his eyes, one blood-red, the other the color of the summer sky. “And now? What am I to you now?”

Jean-Louis traced a finger across James’s forehead, down his cheek, along the lines that were deeper, more numerous than before, a map of their life together. Had he etched all those lines there? Had they walked that many miles together? He slid his hand around the back of James’s neck and pulled him in for a kiss. “Now, James? God. The Devil. And Santa Claus.”

***

“Will you please keep still?” Jean-Louis rubbed at his right eye again and blinked several times to clear his vision. “It’s annoying.”

James was pacing back and forth in the hospital room, giddy with excitement because Jean-Louis was scheduled for release. The various bone fractures had stabilized and there was no sign of infection or internal swelling; all they needed was for Jean-Louis’s physician, Dr. Michael McKenna, to conduct a final exam and sign the requisite forms. It had been nine days, nine long days, and James had hated leaving him there while he went to work at the bar. Kerrie and Stephanie had visited Jean-Louis at the hospital several times and brought food for the kids at home, but James had been less than appreciative. He couldn’t get past his jealousy, or maybe it was insecurity but, goddamn it, why did Stephanie’s chicken and noodle casserole have to taste so good and he could only imagine how Kerrie must have peppered Jean-Louis’s bruises with a thousand kisses. Fucking women and their winning ways. James couldn’t wait to get him home and on lockdown.

At ten-thirty sharp, Dr. McKenna waltzed into the room with a blue file tucked under his arm. “Today’s the big day, eh?” The man was in his early sixties but still had a full head of thick red hair shot through with streaks of grey at his temples; a handsome man indeed.

“Let’s hope so.” James shook his hand and hugged the smaller man. Dr. McKenna had been his own internist back when he was still playing football and had remained his doctor since then. It was Dr. McKenna who had red-flagged the symptoms of Jean-Louis’s lymphoma sixteen years ago and, in James’s mind, the man was a savior to both of them. He hadn’t been the one to treat Jean-Louis’s illness, but he was a hero nevertheless.

Dr. McKenna put the file down on a chair and sat on the bed next to Jean-Louis, palpated lightly around his face and neck. “How are you feeling today?” He had been weaning Jean-Louis off the painkillers and was ready to lecture him on his weed and alcohol habit, not that he’d ever had any luck in convincing his patient to cut back. There was no reason for Jean-Louis to be alive, yet here he was, battered but breathing.

“Good. Well. Odd.”

“Odd? Where?”

“My right eye,” Jean-Louis said. He could already hear James screaming “Oh, _fuck_ no!” inside his head. “I noticed it this morning when I woke up.”

“Pain?” asked Dr. McKenna. He pulled a slim flashlight out of his coat pocket. The eye was still red but greatly improved. He shined the light into it and stared.

“Not pain. Something strange. I see a shadow. Like a shade being pulled down.”

Dr. McKenna exhaled through his nose and frowned. “Wait here. I need to make a phone call.” He disappeared into the hallway and all Jean-Louis could do was shrug helplessly while James wiped his brow in frustration.

“What now?” James groaned. “Christ.”

Ten minutes later Dr. McKenna returned with another man in a white coat. “Jean-Louis, this is Dr. Frederick Jacobs, our head of ophthalmology. He’s going to take a look at your eye.”

Dr. Jacobs confirmed what Dr. McKenna had feared. “You have a detached retina. It may have been precipitated by the trauma of the accident; a jarring movement can cause a tear or detachment. But regardless of cause, you’ll need surgery to repair it.”

“When?” asked James miserably.

“Today.”

***

He was kept overnight for observation after the vitrectomy in case any other problems cropped up. That was the easy part. Once he was home, he was reduced to lying or sitting face down at all times to keep the gas bubble that had been inserted into his eye in the correct position. This torturous regimen had to be strictly followed for two weeks and it was harder on James than it was on Jean-Louis, who was happy to smoke weed or listen to his Japanese language app to pass the boredom. He knew he would be in Tokyo and Osaka for work in several months and he found this to be a good opportunity to master basic, conversational Japanese. James, though, was riddled with anxiety. It would be weeks before they would know if the surgery was successful, if Jean-Louis recovered his sight in that eye.

Marcel, who was an avid consumer of manga and anime, was eager to learn Japanese with his Papa and, once school was back in session, he started bringing home his one Japanese-speaking classmate, Kensuke Nakashima, who was in his AP math classes. Kensuke was thin and brainy like Marcel, and wore his hair long. He wanted to be an architect and already looked the part with his round framed glasses like Le Corbusier used to wear. He was shy to the point of awkwardness around James, who didn’t know what to make of the strange boy—James was lucky to get two words out of him: ‘yes’ and ‘sir’—but he would see him and Marcel screaming with laughter as they played video games in the sunroom or watched one of those crazy animes that Marcel favored so much and it would put a smile on his face. It reminded James of his own childhood, all those happy days spent without a care in the world, when he didn’t have to juggle what seemed like too many knives in the air.

Chloe wouldn’t give an inch, especially after Jean-Louis’s eye surgery; she was bent on punishing James for the rest of his life apparently. In late September, Jean-Louis was allowed to slowly resume more normal activities. He could go to work but could not drive or travel by air anytime soon. He didn’t look himself yet, but the bruises were fading, and the children no longer cringed at the sight of him.

“How long are you going to stay mad at him?” Jean-Louis asked one evening. James was working the late shift at the bar and he was home making dinner while Chloe helped him cook, slicing carrots for him because his depth perception was off. She had been shadowing him ever since he came home from the hospital, treating him like an invalid. “I want you to forgive him, Chloe. He’s your father and you owe him some respect, some kindness.”

She made a noise of utter disbelief. “Are you kidding me? Did you get brain damaged in that accident? Why should I forgive him?”

“Because it’ll be good for your own health.”

“My health is fucking fine. _You’re_ the one who’s…” She let her voice trail off; to say the thought aloud would make it real, and she didn’t want her fear to gain a foothold in reality.

“Yes? What? I’m the one who’s so pathetic I need to be looked after like some feeble old man? You don’t trust me to survive on my own?”

“It’s not that!” she protested. “Dad does whatever the fuck he wants and we’re all supposed to just _let_ him get away with murder ‘cause he’s the boss and all that bullshit. It’s not right!”

“Ma bichette, _you’re_ the one murdering him right now.” He took the knife out of her hand and hugged her. “I know what you’re thinking, but I swear to you, there’s nothing you can do to him that I haven’t already done. Tell him you forgive him, please, for me. Do it for me, won’t you?”

With her face pressed into his chest, she could believe that nothing bad had happened, he was still the same and not someone unrecognizable lying in a hospital bed with tubes sticking out of him. Was that really him? She still couldn’t believe it. Benjamin, and even Marcel…her brothers had been able to rationalize it, compartmentalize the horror of it, and move past it, but she couldn’t, she couldn’t get it out of her head. It wasn’t her Papa in that hospital bed looking like that; that was someone else. “Promise me you won’t change, Papa. Promise me you’ll always be the same. Then I’ll forgive him.”

She was asking for the impossible. To live was to change. To die was to change, too. There was no helping it either way. He kissed her cheeks and wondered what Charlotte would say to such a demand. His sister had always kept her promises to him. It was he who had failed on every count. Would he fail Chloe, too? Probably. Definitely. So he wished instead for a much better man than him to make her forget that she had ever put him first in her heart. Aloud, though, he lied with a smile, "I will always be what you want me to be."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was originally titled 'Where are the Freaking Exits?'  
> After reading it over, I decided to retitle it.


	15. The Ties that Bind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean-Louis mulls over James's recent change in behavior. Chloe teases the truth out of Marcel.

 

It was late, almost one-thirty, but Jean-Louis lay awake staring into the glow of the numbers on the digital clock, thinking. They had made love for the first time since the accident, after two and a half months of abstinence. It seemed almost inconceivable to him that they had been celibate all that time. Though it was now the middle of October, he had been willing weeks earlier—as soon as the gas bubble in his right eye had been absorbed and he had freedom of movement—but James had only wanted to nestle against him in bed, clutched tightly in his arms. They had kissed, and not without passion, but each time he had reached for James he had found him soft and James would say “We shouldn’t” or “You’re not well yet” or “You’ll get hurt” or some other ridiculous claim that left Jean-Louis stunned with rejection. “Am I so ugly to you now?” he asked once, and only once because he realized afterward that it had come out like a terrible accusation, like blame, when he hadn’t meant it to be. The look of guilty resignation on James’s face was one he didn’t want to see again. So he was startled when James pulled him to his chest and he felt the hard length of his cock pressing against the small of his back like a hot brand. Jean-Louis froze, uncertain of his next move. Then James brought his hand around to play at a nipple and Jean-Louis wasted no time, whispering, “I want you, daddy. Do you want me, too?”

“Yeah, baby,” James murmured in return, mouthing at his ear, “I want you so bad.”

But James wouldn’t let him turn around. He kept Jean-Louis on his side facing away from him as he fondled him, stroking his cock lightly, palming his balls, then slicking his entrance with a lubed finger before he lined up and breached him with an exhaled groan. He was an unstoppable wave driving inland; he would fill him up, drown him with everything he had to give.

“Ah! Daddy…” Jean-Louis sucked in a stuttering breath and rolled his hips, both craving and recoiling from the familiar stretch and burn of penetration, that overwhelming pain and pressure rocking into him, wrecking him. “Fuck…me…” he moaned, mewled, “fuck me…daddy…fuck…oh…more…” James was gripping his left hip, holding him steady as he pulled out and slid in deep again, his fingers digging hard into flesh and bone and Jean-Louis couldn’t help but think of the bruises that would be there in the morning, new ones to replace the ones that had faded, James leaving his mark on him like a tattoo inked in blood.

The weight of James behind him pushed him onto his stomach, the angle of their bodies shifted, and when Jean-Louis arched his back, James was pounding his sweet spot even as he shoved his face into the pillow with a hand to the back of his head. Jean-Louis was gasping for air, his ribs beginning to protest with sharp stabs into his lungs, but he didn’t want it to stop, neither the blinding white sparks behind his eyelids nor the maddening arousal building inside him with every quick hard thrust that landed a punch in his gut. There was a moment of lightheadedness when he thought he might faint, float away, and then he was pulled back into himself, all the way to the pit of his stomach as he clenched down around James and climaxed, his screams muffled in the pillow as he spilled onto the sheets. Through his own spasms he could feel James finishing inside him—James had opted to bareback for once—the hot pulses of wetness, the twitching and throbbing of James’s cock as he sank himself balls deep and swore through clenched teeth, “F-fucking hell…ah fuck…I love you baby…god, I love you.”

Afterward, though, when James had cleaned himself in the bathroom and come back to bed, he was despondent, demanding with rough kisses, “Tell me you won’t leave me. Tell me you’ll bury me. You’ve got to be the one to bury me, baby. It can’t be the other way around.”

Jean-Louis was taken aback, not by the silly demands but by James’s almost childish fear of the future, a future that was as unknown and uncertain today as it would be tomorrow. The man had always worn his heart on his sleeve, had never held back from speaking his mind or tackling a challenge—in that respect James had been stupidly fearless—but he had never indulged in self-pity and doubt like this, never thrown himself down in the muck of abject vulnerability and weakness. “Why are you worrying over these things?” asked Jean-Louis. “Is it because of Chloe? I’ve already talked to her. She’s not mad at you anymore.”

James grunted in frustration. “She can be mad at me ‘til hell freezes over. She’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Then what? Why are you being like this?” Jean-Louis was seeing a side of him that he hadn’t witnessed before: James was in real pain, driven by some kind of irrational anguish, and actually wallowing in it. He had known James during his pro playing days, had nursed him through his career-ending spinal injury, and the man had never once complained about what had to have been sheer physical agony, had never given in to despair. And now this? He was going to surrender to…what? Fear of the unknown future? Hadn’t he lived through far worse already? “Why is this bothering you so much?” Jean-Louis asked again, ‘this’ being the car accident, which was clearly still rattling James’s cage. “Why can’t you just let it go? Do I look so different to you?”

The room was dark but Jean-Louis didn’t need to see James’s face to know that he had said the wrong thing. He could feel James’s body go rigid next to him, knew he was using every ounce of self-control to contain whatever beast was raging inside him. When he finally spoke, the misery was unmistakable in his voice. “You don’t look different to me,” James rasped. He slapped his hands over his eyes, as if that would keep the tears from coming. The truth was, _how_ Jean-Louis looked—his beauty, no matter how subjective such a thing was—had always mattered first and foremost to James and rendered him helpless in the same way he had been unmanned by the faces of his twins when he had first held them as newborns. He had _seen_ Jean-Louis and _fallen in love_ —the two acts contingent and inextricably linked—and the memory of it was unalterable. To call it a superficial fixation was to miss the point completely. What he had captured with his eyes so long ago, his Jean-Louis—first as a stoner kid in college, then later as a young man drunk in a bar—had been a vision as perfect and destructive as a bolt of lightning striking his heart, striking him down, like a tree cleft in two by a mindless, merciless force of nature. How could such a thing be superficial when it had scarred him to his very core for life? And had he ruined him in return, ruined that perfect vision? Jean-Louis was untouchable, wasn’t he, set apart above all others? He was here, alive, and the memory of him would keep him so. “You’ll always be beautiful,” James told him, told himself, too, “no matter what I do to you.”

“Then there it is,” Jean-Louis replied. He got up and poured a finger of bourbon from the bottle James kept on the dresser. “Drink this and go to sleep. You can tell me again how beautiful I am in the morning.”

Minutes after downing the whiskey, James was out like a light while Jean-Louis lay contemplating the nature of love. People assume that love resides in the heart, perhaps because that is what aches the most, but no, thought Jean-Louis, Proust was probably right, more accurate at least, when he wrote that bonds exist in the mind, not the heart. Is it what we _think_ and _remember_ , what we convince ourselves to _believe,_ no matter how twisted and tainted by our own neuroses, that ties us to another, wondered Jean-Louis, what we imagine in our heads that enables such a mutable thing as beauty to remain unchanged, for love to blossom, grow, or die, for souls to find their other half, time and again, even after death? He didn’t remember drifting to sleep, only waking to the feel of the mattress shifting as James got up for his early morning workout in the basement gym. He rolled over and stretched out on the side of the bed just vacated, still warm from the heat of James’s body, still smelling of him. He pressed his nose into James’s pillow, breathed in the scent of his shampoo and soap. He pulled the sheets up closer around his face and found it—the faint notes of sweat and cum, both of their scents mingled—and fell back into a deep, dreamless slumber.

***

“Man, those two are toasted,” observed Marcel.

Jean-Louis and Kerrie sat two rows below him and Chloe and were sharing a joint as they watched James violently punching the air with a fist down near the field of play, shouting like a madman at the passing game coordinator. Benjamin had made it onto the varsity football squad that fall as a backup quarterback and as much as James had dreaded the prospect of Benjamin playing the sport at all, he still couldn’t resist giving the coaches a piece of his former pro player mind when it came to his son’s underutilized abilities. Luckily, the coaches gave James plenty of leeway since he was a former Bronco and beloved despite his annoying and biased commentary at the Friday night high school games.

“Totally burnt,” Chloe agreed as she eyed her Papa and Kerrie laughing hysterically at James’s antics. She and Marcel, who were getting high from the fumes alone, were huddled up at the top of the bleachers along with all the other stoners, keeping an eye on Jean-Louis in case he took a wrong step and fell on his face. He could see out of his right eye but his vision wasn’t the same as before, and he’d injured himself by misjudging a corner and smacking into a wall or stumbling on the stairs on more than one occasion. Her poor Papa. His scars had healed nicely, he was as lovely as ever, but he was more helpless, even if this helplessness was being imposed on him. His ophthalmologist had given him the green light to drive again but James insisted on taking him to the office in the mornings.

“I have to drop the kids to school anyway,” went James’s reasoning. “Might as well take you in, too.”

It was Kerrie who drove Jean-Louis back home in the evenings when James was at the bar. They had seen a lot more of Kerrie after the accident and Chloe wasn’t averse to it. She admired and appreciated Kerrie’s wicked sense of humor and valued her female perspective on all matters, but she also knew that Kerrie was Jean-Louis’s compatriot in debauchery and that Kerrie’s influence was a source of tremendous irritation to James. Chloe and her father butted heads more often than not, but she was equally stubborn in defending him against anyone who would cause him grief. That was _her_ job, both the defending and the grief-inflicting. Still, Kerrie made her Papa happy in ways her father didn’t, and she wouldn’t begrudge her Papa whatever joy he could grasp.

“Do you think those two are still banging?” asked Chloe. She grabbed a handful of shrimp flavored chips out of the bag Marcel was holding and crunched loudly.

“Yeah,” Marcel replied, popping a chip into his own mouth. “I heard them the other night. It’s been awhile though. I was starting to get worried.”

She tossed her brother a bemused grin. “I didn’t mean Dad and Papa. I meant Papa and Kerrie.” She nudged Marcel as they watched Kerrie drape an arm around Jean-Louis’s shoulder and lightly stroke his hair. “Shit. They’re probably still doing it.”

“When?” Marcel was more skeptical. “They don’t even go out together anymore. Not alone, at least. Dad’s always there, Stephanie’s always there.” He was silent and then he wondered aloud, “Do you think all four of them are doing it?”

Chloe’s mouth fell open. Even _she_ hadn’t considered such a thing. She herself had gone through a string of boyfriends, but she’d never had sex with more than one at a time. “I-I don’t even want to think about them doing that, Marcel. That’s just too sick.”

Marcel snorted, feeling a little smug, “When did you turn into such a prude, sis?”

“I am _not_ a prude. And when did you become such a master of perversion? Is your little Japanese boyfriend teaching you the _Kama Sutra_ or something?”

“The _Kama Sutra_ is _Indian_ ,” Marcel corrected, “and, no, he’s not my…why do you think he’s my boyfriend?”

“Isn’t he? You two are always locked up in your bedroom every time he’s over.”

“That’s not…Kensuke’s helping me learn Japanese.”

“I’ll bet. Has he taught you how to say ‘I love you’ or is ‘kimochīi’ the only thing you can remember when you’re making out with him?” When Marcel gaped at her mutely, she went on with her own smug smile, “Yeah, I figured as much. I know everything about you, little brother. You can’t fool me.” 

“Wh-what? You can hear us?” Marcel stared into his bag of chips, his face hot with incredulity and embarrassment, his conscience weighing on him. Chloe was right. His sister could sniff out a lie like a bloodhound could a raccoon up a tree. It made him wonder if he could continue hiding in plain sight about other things as well. He didn’t like to keep anything from her or Benjamin. They were his siblings, his flesh and blood; they were on his side through thick and thin, weren’t they? His best friend through grade school, Aaron Lovitz, had moved away during the summer when his father took a job in Vancouver. At the same time, Kensuke’s family had moved into town when his father took a position at the University of Colorado Denver as Dean of the College of Architecture and Planning. He and Kensuke had clicked right away over Marcel’s two rabid interests at first: video games and comic books. Then Kensuke had introduced him to Japanese manga and anime and a whole new world opened up for Marcel that was exciting and provocative, foreign and exotic, like Kensuke himself, who stirred up feelings in Marcel that were as yet unexplored and a little frightening. He didn’t want to talk to his parents about it, especially his Dad. He was afraid James would throw a fit if he found out about them. Learning Japanese had been a convenient excuse to spend time outside of school with Kensuke—at least his Papa seemed to accept it without question—but his Dad was more quick to judge, more reactive, and with the accident and his Papa’s ongoing recovery, the last thing Marcel wanted to do was rock James’s boat.

Chloe wasn’t done with him. “Of course I can hear you. You should know how thin the walls are. If you can hear Dad and Papa fucking, what makes you think I can’t hear you two? Why do you think I never bring my boyfriends home? I don’t have a death wish.”

“God, sis, don’t tell Dad, okay? He’ll kill me…” He ate another chip but it turned to sawdust in his dry mouth. Sheesh, he was so screwed.

“Don’t worry, you idiot,” assured Chloe. She patted him on the head with sisterly affection. “I won’t give away your pervy little secrets. So…uh…what do you guys actually do? Kiss? Feel each other up?” Marcel just groaned but that only made her more curious. “Do you jerk it together?”

That prompted a vigorous shake of the head from Marcel. “For fuck’s sake, sis!”

“C’mon, tell me. Ben’s showed you how to do it, hasn’t he?”

“Oh my god.” Marcel heaved a sigh and gave up on any hope of defending himself. His brother had taught him all the joys of masturbation when he had turned thirteen like it was some sacred rite of passage and he was grateful to Benjamin because he might not have thought to use hand lotion right off the bat. Thanks to his brother, he had gone from amateur to pro in five minutes. Now he and Kensuke were discovering how good it felt to do it to and with each other, not that he wanted to discuss it with his sister. He didn’t want to discuss it with anyone except Kensuke. Luckily, there was a commotion down on the field that caught Chloe’s attention.

“You should probably go down there and get him,” Chloe muttered to her brother. “Dad looks like he’s ready to beat the shit out of that guy.”

Indeed, James was shouting at one of the refs who had probably given him a warning to shut the fuck up and several of the coaches were holding him back. Meanwhile, Benjamin stood on the sideline waiting patiently for the fracas to end. He wasn’t even embarrassed; it had happened so many times at his baseball games when James would argue with the umpires that he was simply immune to it. The running back, Matt Crenshaw, came over to Benjamin. Matt was one grade ahead of him, a senior, and was currently dating Chloe.

“Do you think I’ll be able to see your sister after the game?” Matt asked. Matt was shorter and stockier than Benjamin, with a head of thick brown curls and was none too bright.

“I dunno. My Dad looks really pissed right now. Better not come to the house, that’s all I can say.” Benjamin glanced over to see Marcel leading James away, back up the stands to sit with Jean-Louis. Chloe had moved down to sit next to Kerrie and they all waved down at Benjamin, who swung his helmet in the air with a wide grin. He felt like the luckiest boy in the world.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had meant to get this chapter out a lot sooner, but life is only now getting back to normal after a blizzard that took out power/electricity for days. What fun! Hopefully, no more delays in posting updates due to Mother Nature.


	16. Continental Drift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's back to business in more ways than one.

 

“Where the fuck are you?” James shouted into his phone. It was almost dinnertime and he was rushing up the stairs with a laundry basket full of clean clothes, all horribly wrinkled because he had forgotten them in the dryer since mid-morning. It was a Tuesday, the only day he had off from working the bar and his day to take care of the domestic chores. Jean-Louis wasn’t in bed when James got home at two in the morning the night before and was still nowhere to be seen at breakfast. In the old days, that could only mean one thing: the bastard had stayed in a hotel room with some one-night stand. But those days were long gone James had told himself, too tired to do anything except shower and pass out in an empty bed. More likely, Jean-Louis had gone out drinking with Kerrie and stayed over at her place…probably had a threesome with Stephanie joining in…

That angry thought was still rattling around in James’s head as he barreled into Ben’s and then Chloe’s rooms, leaving their clothes in messy piles on their beds. Downstairs in the kitchen, the pot of chili was boiling over on the stovetop; he could definitely smell something burning. Magda cleaned the house each Wednesday and James could already picture her standing at the stove with a soapy Brillo pad, yelling, “What pig make this mess? I spank bad pig! Spank with broom!” She was ten times worse than Rosa when it came to threats of disciplinary violence and James knew he was in for it. Jean-Louis had resumed his normal work-travel schedule after the New Year, having been cleared to fly, but he still cooked dinner when he was home and was always meticulous in cleaning up as he went along, even if he was stoned and drunk. James had always wondered how he managed to whip up four star meals without accidentally chopping off a finger or burning down the house. It was one of life’s mysteries, and now James was going to get to the bottom of Jean-Louis’s sudden disappearance.

“I’m at the airport,” came the tired reply. “I just landed.”

James paused in the doorway of Marcel’s room and dropped his phone to his hip. The chili wasn’t the only thing boiling over now. Well, _that_ might explain why Jean-Louis had been AWOL for the past twenty-four hours. James put the phone back up to his ear and asked, “What airport?” He was seething mad.

“Narita.”

“Narita? Where the fuck is that? Iceland?”

“Uh, Japan.”

“How long?” groaned James.

“Two weeks.”

There was a thick heavy silence, ominous and black as a night in Hell with the fires out, and then James declared through clenched teeth, “When you come home, I’m going to kill you. Do you hear me? You are so fucking irresponsible! You know I have that stupid book signing in London on Sunday. Who’s going to take care of the kids if we’re both away? You know that Rosa’s in Venezuela this month!”

Jean-Louis let out an exasperated sigh, secretly enjoying James’s irritation. _This_ was a man he recognized, quick to anger and wrong about everything. “Don’t tell me you forgot. We talked about this, James. _And_ I left you a note.”

“What note? Why didn’t you just text me?”

“I _did_ text you. But you never bother reading half my texts, so I left you a note, too. Look on your goddamn dresser! Shit. I have to go. I’ll call you later. Bye.”

Sure enough, there was a note on the dresser written in Jean-Louis’s distinctive miniscule scrawl. James squinted as he read the one line of script on the piece of paper: _Will be leaving for the airport straight from work_. Okay. That wasn’t much help. 

At dinner, James said to the kids, “Hey, guess what? Your Papa is in Japan right now. Did any of you guys know that?” He took a generous gulp of beer to douse his fury.

Benjamin spooned another dollop of sour cream on top of his bowl of chili and nodded. “Yeah, Dad. He reminded us last week.”

“You’ve gotta be shittin’ me!” James insisted with a slam of his fist on the table.

Chloe was too busy texting a new boyfriend to bother getting into the conversation, but Marcel piped in, “That was last Thursday. We had lemon chicken and potatoes for dinner that night and chocolate mousse for dessert. Does that ring a bell?” He knew how foodcentric his Dad was. Plus, Marcel had been eagerly anticipating his Papa’s trip to Japan for weeks because he had a laundry list of items he wanted Jean-Louis to bring back for him to share with Kensuke—mangas and collectible figurines and lots of weird snacks—and he had been counting down the days.

“Chocolate mousse?” James blinked, then scratched his head. “Yeah…chocolate mousse…what did he say? I don’t remember him saying anything about a trip to Japan.”

Chloe set her phone aside and casually rattled off her Papa’s itinerary. “He said he’s in Osaka this week and then in Tokyo for five days next week, plus two days for sightseeing.” Then she smiled sweetly, knowing how much this was going to annoy the shit out of her father, and said, “Kerrie will be staying with us while you’re in London.” She looked suspiciously at her dinner. “This is _turkey_ chili, right? You know I don’t eat red meat, don’t you, Dad? This better not be ground beef.”

“Th’ fuck? Sightseeing?” When it came to travel for work, James was all business: get in, get out. He was a creature of habit, of routine, and ‘sightseeing’ was for tourists wearing Bermuda shorts, Hawaiian shirts, and socks with sandals. “And Kerrie’s babysitting you guys? I agreed to that? How come I’m the only one in the dark about this?” James still couldn’t believe there had been any discussion about Jean-Louis going to Japan or about Kerrie watching the kids. James had specifically scheduled his London trip at a time when he was certain Jean-Louis would be home. A lot of good that would do him now; it was far too late to change his plans. He felt like he had been dropped into an alternate universe, although he did remember the chocolate mousse for some strange reason. Jean-Louis had made it from scratch and it had been delicious, the perfect blend of chocolate both bitter and sweet and of a texture balancing airy lightness and fatty richness. He could still remember the taste and feel of it in his mouth.

“You’re the one who said you didn’t want to meet up with him in Tokyo after your book thing,” Marcel reminded him. 

“I did?”

“Yeah, Dad.” Benjamin got up to go to the stove to refill his bowl. “You said there was no way you’d eat raw fish.” 

Now things became clearer. “Fucking hell. I thought he was asking me to go to some sushi restaurant. Shit.” Okay. He had come home that night after having way too many drinks at the bar with his old buddy on the Broncos, Dontrell Wainwright, and maybe he really wasn’t paying attention to what Jean-Louis was saying, his head was still full of his talk with Donnie about football and all the amazing plays they had been a part of and, well, that might explain why he didn’t remember Jean-Louis saying shit about going to Japan. “I can’t believe he’s going to be there for two fucking weeks.”

“Does this mean you’ll be making dinner again?” asked Marcel. He kept his tone of voice cheerful, but deep down inside he was terrified. The chili was awful—had his Dad mistakenly used cinnamon instead of cayenne?—and there was a disheartening amount left in the pot, even with Ben eating like a maniac. Ben had spent the previous fall sitting on the sidelines as a backup quarterback with little playing time, but now that it was spring and he was back to playing baseball, pitching every five days and getting more heavily into weight training, his appetite was voracious, a good thing, Marcel mused, because when his Dad cooked, he did it on an epic scale. And failed on an equally epic scale; that was just how he rolled. The last time Jean-Louis went away for a business trip, James had tried to impress the kids with his grandmother’s sauerbraten recipe. “Your Papa’s not the only one who knows how to cook around here,” James had declared smugly. After one taste, the entire dish had gone into the garbage. So now Marcel suggested, “I don’t mind doing the cooking, Dad. Or we can just have sandwiches. Who doesn’t like sandwiches?” He looked around at his siblings, hoping they’d back him up, but Benjamin never did discriminate when it came to food and Chloe hardly ate a thing beyond yogurt and Jean-Louis’s homemade granola.

“Don’t you worry, little man,” James assured him. “I’ll whip up your Nana’s famous meatloaf recipe.” 

With a nod and a weak smile, Marcel forced down another spoonful of chili. Nana’s meatloaf recipe was ‘famous’ for having frozen peas and carrots mixed in to give it that 'gourmet' touch and, in the hands of his Dad, it tasted like a five-pound brick of cement mix. Four days. His Dad would be leaving for London in four days and then Kerrie would be taking over thankfully. Until then, he’d ask Kensuke if he could eat at his house instead.

***

James walked across the street to the Sainsbury’s and bought a liter bottle of water for fifty pence, then trudged back to his hotel, the St Giles on Tottenham Court Road. He had learned his lesson the last time he was in London for an NFL International Series game when he had made the mistake of drinking water straight from the tap at his hotel and then spent the next two days with a serious case of the runs. The St Giles was a dump but still overrun with student groups and large contingents of elderly travelers from Germany and France. The foyer was under renovation and a complete eyesore as guests struggled to pull their luggage up temporary stairs to the makeshift check-in counters sited amidst the din of workmen drilling and hammering as they installed ceiling grids and drywall. Two of the elevators were out of commission; that meant long waits. James took the stairs instead and swore a blue streak when he remembered that in England, the first floor didn’t mean the ground floor, as it did in America. He also cursed his agent for talking him into this publicity stunt in the first place. Christ, he couldn’t wait to get back home to sanity, the good old U.S. of A., where people drove on the _correct_ side of the road amongst other sensible things.

The muscles in his legs were on fire by the time he exited onto the eighth floor from the service stairwell. He nodded to one of the maids, an attractive dark-haired woman in her late twenties speaking a Slavic sounding language into her mobile, as he walked down several depressing hallways. Damp, musty air hit him as soon as he opened the door to his cramped room. It was furnished with a single bed, a night table, a narrow cubby with space to hang no more than a jacket and a shirt, a nook with a chair and built-in desk with an electric hot water kettle in case he was in the mood for tea or instant coffee. The bathroom must have been updated in the early 2000s and was all the worse for wear. Black mold proliferated along the grout lining the floors. All the light switches were discolored and sticky with grime.

He flopped down on the bed and texted Jean-Louis even though it was five in the morning in Tokyo and it would be hours before Jean-Louis would see it: _miss u luv u_. After he sent it he realized how sappy it sounded, as if he were some needy teenaged girl instead of a grown man. Oh well. He was long past embarrassment or shame when it came to Jean-Louis. He imagined his golden boy sleeping soundly in some posh hotel, naked between luxury Egyptian cotton sheets, curled up on his right side; the only thing missing was his own body folded against his back, his arms around him, their breaths in sync. James’s heart ached with the thought. He cracked open the bottle of water and wished he could speed up time as he stared at the television mounted on the wall. An episode of _Midsummer Murders_ was showing: a little old lady was being done in with a hatpin driven into her ear. He was asleep by the commercial break. 

The next morning, he showered and shaved, dressed, and made his way down the stairwell, through the chaotic lobby, and back up another makeshift set of stairs to one of the hotel’s dining areas where they had a full hot English breakfast available: sausages, rashers, stewed tomatoes, baked beans, hash browns, toast, scrambled eggs. At the other end of the rectangular space was lighter fare: yogurt, cottage cheese, canned peaches, granola, cereal, croissants, rolls, cold slices of ham and Swiss cheese. He noticed the non-English guests congregated on that end; everyone else was loading up on the rashers and hash browns. James smiled ruefully. If only Jean-Louis were here with him...sitting opposite with a bowl of plain yogurt sprinkled with muesli and a cup of black coffee...James with a plate piled high with eggs and salted meat. He took a table by the window and went over his notes as he ate. He was in town for a series of events to promote his book, _Road to Recovery: An Athlete’s Guide to Fitness_. His public relations agent and media handler since his pro playing days, Derek Schlesinger, had been gunning for a full-on biography replete with the kind of juicy, salacious elements that people seemed to love, but James had balked. He was proud of what he had accomplished in football, but his personal life was nobody’s business, potential best seller or not. His former forays into the media spotlight had infuriated Jean-Louis, who was fiercely private in that regard, especially while James was playing and even after he had ‘retired’ from the sport. James couldn’t really blame him for his reticence.

***

Word had gotten out well before the actual wedding, but afterwards, pretty much everyone knew. James didn’t give a shit. Derek was more worried. It wasn’t just the shitstorm of rabid commentary that was proving hard to manage—everyone from fans to former teammates to sports analysts to someone’s grandma in Missouri had to weigh in with their two cents’ worth on James’s ‘gayness’—it was the loss of revenue from endorsement deals that really concerned him. Derek earned a percentage of the income James garnered through these contracts and he had worked too hard to put James’s face in the media to let it all go to pot.

“Dude, listen. Are you sure you want to go through with this?” Derek had been invited to the wedding and thought it was a terrible idea. “You could still salvage this thing." 

“What thing?” It was ten in the morning and James was at his dive of a bar drying glasses and drinking a protein shake. His dayshift employee, Hanley, was outside hosing down the puke on the sidewalk while his bartender, Andy, was cutting up lemons and limes at the other end of the bar.

The frustration in Derek’s voice was clear. “Your _career_ , man, your career.”

“What career? I run a shitty bar for fuck’s sake.” Andy gave a brief chortle at that and tossed a lemon rind at James’s head.

“Jesus Christ, James, you don’t have to sink the whole ship. Why don’t you just do it like everyone else?”

“And how’s that?”

“Just marry some hot super model. You know, like Tom Brady did. Who you fuck on the side is your own business.”

“I’m pretty sure Tom Brady isn’t fucking some French guy behind Giselle’s back.”

“Then let me spin it the other way,” Derek pleaded.

James sighed. He was tired of arguing with people about this. He had asked Derek to shut down both his Facebook and Twitter accounts because he was sick of telling every LGBT organization in America to leave him the fuck alone. He wasn’t interested in representing their ‘cause’ or being on some poster with his face and the words ‘I’m gay and proud!’ because he was neither of the above as far as he was concerned.

“Derek, c’mon man. I’m done with all that. I don’t give a flying fuck what people think about me, people can say whatever they want, I don’t care, okay? I’m not waving some stupid rainbow flag for anyone. I just want to live my life and mind my own business. The rest of the world can go fuck themselves.”

“What about the endorsement deals?” asked Derek.

“Yeah, what about them?”

“Do you really think Nike or Under Armour or Gatorade or Pizza Hut is going to want a gay former pro athlete representing their product?”

“No. Is that what you want me to say? Okay, fine. They can drop me. They’ve dropped plenty of other people for whatever reasons. I don’t care. If they don’t want my big ‘gay’ body in their shoes or clothing or chugging their god awful drinks and pretending to eat their shitty pizza, that’s fine by me. I’m marrying my boy and they can all suck my dick. End of story.”

Things got worse for a while after the wedding. Every morning, daytime, and late night talk show wanted him, like he was the Elephant Man and the whole world was anxious to see such a freak of nature. _Former pro footballer and four-time Pro Bowler! Gay! Married! With kids! Drum roll, please!_ Except he was no Neil Patrick Harris or Elton John or Siegfried and Roy, no, he didn’t come out of the entertainment industry where everyone and his uncle was gay and people expected no less. He came out of red-meat-eating, nail-spitting American pro sports where nobody was gay unless you wanted to be murdered ten times over. Well, he was done with pro sports, but now it seemed like every good southern Baptist, every genuflecting Catholic, every gun-toting Republican wanted him dead. He had let small town America down, shattered their illusions about what an NFL pro athlete should be.

“No way, Derek. I’m not going on Ellen or Dr. Phil or The Late Show. I don’t want to talk about my life anymore and, besides, Jean-Louis would have my balls.”

“But there’s tremendous public interest. People want to know! We should take advantage of this.”

“Yeah? So they can crucify me?” The religiously motivated diatribes and homophobic comments didn’t really bother him. It was the mortified look on Jean-Louis’s face that killed him every time some stranger or newscaster or journalist said or wrote something hurtful and small-minded. The support and occasional praise from the other side of the fence was equally disturbing. He had never been a part of the gay community, didn’t see himself as some sort of card-carrying member, and didn’t feel at all comfortable being around that sector anymore than he did before he supposedly ‘came out.’ The whole thing was a mess but there was nothing he could do about it except to put his head down and ignore all the noise, wait for it to all blow over.

“What about a book, then?” Derek proposed. “You wouldn’t have to write a word yourself, I could get someone to do that for you, a ghost writer. How do you think George W. managed a bio? Shit, you could make a killing…”

***

It took over a decade of hounding for James to finally cave in to Derek’s book idea. He still thought it was all nonsense, but Jean-Louis had greenlighted it since the focus was on weight training and not on their relationship. For the first time, James regretted the fact that Jean-Louis had actually said ‘yes’ to something.

The Sunday afternoon Q&A session at Foyles went well enough. The bookstore on Charing Cross Road had opened a new branch right next to the old one a few years back and boasted several spacious floors. James’s event was held downstairs and the small crowd of Londoners were polite even when asking mildly to wildly inappropriate questions like, “What was it like to be gay in a homophobic sport?” and “Is your spouse here?” and “Would you ever consider bottoming for someone?” James would shake his head and say, “Next question please.” The book was a guide to health and fitness, for fuck’s sake; anything autobiographical was limited to five short paragraphs in the introduction and eight sentences on the dust jacket, but people seemed to fixate on the personal details of his life rather than the systematic strengthening of all the muscle groups. Cake and tea were served during the book signing portion. It was all very civilized.

The next day, he was scheduled to do the same thing all over again at Lutyens & Rubinstein on Kensington Park Road, and afterwards, he was to pay a visit to Jean-Louis’s godfather, Henry Wallace, bearing gifts of port and cognac on his behalf. Jean-Louis had given James very specific instructions.

“I texted you the details, James. Do you still have it? Should I text it again?”

“Yeah, yeah, I have it. I’m not a dummy.” James was in his room getting dressed for his book signing. He had Jean-Louis on speakerphone while he tried for the third time to knot his tie properly in front of the mirror at the desk. He had to sit on the bed in order to see himself in the truncated mirror.

“Make sure you go to the South Kensington shop,” Jean-Louis insisted. “They always carry the brands there. Henry is very particular about what he drinks.”

“Uh huh…shit.” The knot was perfect, but the tie was hanging too low. He started over again.

“James?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it. South Kensington. Don’t worry. I’ll figure it out. Sheesh.”

“Yes, alright.”

“Hey.” James paused and then tossed the tie into his open carry-on. “It’s good to hear your voice.” There was silence, so he went on, “How’s Tokyo?”

“It’s wonderful.”

“Good. Great.” There was another pause. James wanted to tell him again that he missed him but it seemed ridiculous to say it out loud. They would only be apart for a few more days. Surely James could endure _that_ when he had suffered through much longer periods of separation from him in the past, but he had grown used to his daily presence during the months after the accident when Jean-Louis couldn’t travel; James needed it more and more, like an addict craves his next hit, and now that drug was being withheld. In a way, he would have been better off not having tasted it again at all. It was Jean-Louis who broke the silence.

“Remember to go to that cane shop I told you about. It’s only a few blocks from where you’re staying. It would be an easy walk.”

James scowled at himself in the mirror. “I am _not_ going to buy a fucking cane.”

“Just go and have a look at least,” insisted Jean-Louis. “Consider it an indulgence. You would be buying a piece of sculpture, an artwork.”

“I don’t need art and I already have a cane,” James grumbled. That was true. The lightweight aluminum cane cost him $19.99 at Walgreens and it worked just fine on the days when his knees acted up. He heard Jean-Louis heave an impatient sigh, the kind of sigh that had disappointment written all over it and would be accompanied by a dramatic roll of the eyes and shake of the head, so he gave in despite his watertight refusal. “Alright, I’ll go. But if I find one I like, you’re paying for it.”

“Fine. It’ll be an early birthday present.” 

“Oh, c’mon, that blows. Say you’ll play golf with me instead for my birthday.”

Another sigh followed before an annoyed, “We can talk about that later.”

 


	17. Hazardous Ways

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean-Louis falls back on old habits in Tokyo.

 

He stayed at the Century Hyatt in Tokyo. The interpreter hired to lead him around was an older man named Akihito Takahashi or, as Jean-Louis properly addressed him, Takahashi-san. Every morning at eight-thirty on the dot, Takahashi-san would be waiting for him in the hotel lobby to accompany him to his meetings for the day and to a restaurant for dinner, then out to a club afterwards. The hotel was located in Shinjuku near the railway station, and he didn’t have far to go for adult entertainment. The first night had been spent at a karaoke club, the next at a hostess club, the night after at a host club for gentlemen. There, he had an eyeful of the loveliest boys, each one more beautiful than the last. He didn’t have to select just one; as long as he could pay, he could have as many as he liked to sit and drink with him, make small talk, flirt and laugh at jokes. Some weren’t even Japanese. Quite a number were from South Korea, from Taiwan, from Vietnam even. Vietnam. One of the boys, who wore his hair trimmed short, reminded him of the love of his life, Guy-Manuel. The next night, Jean-Louis returned to the same host club, alone this time, telling Takahashi-san that he would be going to bed directly after dinner. He didn’t waste any time, describing the boy to the club manager and requesting a private room. It wasn’t cheap, but the boy was worth it.

In the hush of their private room, the boy whispered his name into Jean-Louis’s ear: Haru. _Spring_. A pseudonym, of course, but the name was fitting since he probably wasn’t a day over eighteen, although it was hard to tell. Asians had a tendency to look younger than their years. He watched as Haru undressed, letting each article of clothing fall to the floor. They were both a little drunk and feeling very amorous, inhibitions gone. It had been a long time since Jean-Louis had taken a young man into his arms. It felt good, liberating, and somewhat surreal. He didn’t think of James; he thought of Guy-Manuel instead: his dark hair, his dark eyes, his smooth, flawless skin. How long had it been since he had allowed himself to think of him, his Guy-Manuel? Ten or more years? Jean-Louis had been almost twenty-three when Guy-Manuel had rightly thrown him away, leaving him wrecked and empty, his heart pulverized into dust. If Jean-Louis saw him now, what would he think, what would he feel? Would he tell Guy-Manuel how much he had regretted his own arrogance, how much he had wanted to _die_ when everything had fallen apart? Could he trace his steps backwards and then choose the right path when he returned to that fork in the road? Or would he get it wrong all over again?

Haru was writhing beneath him, his hitched breaths and soft cries as beautiful as a haiku by Bashō or Sōseki. Jean-Louis hadn’t asked if Haru was a virgin—god, he hoped not—but he made sure to be tender with him, kissed and caressed him the way he had always done with Guy-Manuel, treated him with care and skill. He wanted to give the boy pleasure, so much pleasure, enough to right everything he had done wrong in the past. Haru clung to him, arms around his shoulders, panting, whimpering as Jean-Louis rocked into him. They were both close to the edge. Jean-Louis reached between them and wrapped his hand around the boy’s cock, stroked firmly, rhythmically along the shaft, thumb pressing below the crown, and the boy came, spurting hot and wet around his fist with a loud, keening cry.

“Guy-Man,” Jean-Louis moaned as he let himself go, “Guy-Man…Guy-Man…”

When he returned to his hotel room he couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t guilt. He had never felt guilty about Guy-Manuel, the fact that he had loved the boy even as he had carried on an affair with James. He had been more than ready to leave James behind for Guy-Manuel…only, he hadn’t actually left James. He had wanted to have his cake and eat it too. His greed had destroyed everything. His brother Paul had accused him of greed before, told him that his greed for their father’s love was what had killed the man, drained him of life. And like a curse, his brother’s accusation had followed him, as inescapable as a brand burned onto his heart. Jean-Louis had wanted love, needed it, sought it but couldn’t return it properly. He had always found some way to fuck it up, to perhaps keep more for himself by giving less, by withholding something of himself. The scales were uneven.

So in a fit of sentimental yearning, he Googled him, found where he worked, and called the number. Then he hung up the very next second without leaving a message, palms sweating, cursing himself for such insanity. He nearly jumped out of his skin when his phone rang within a few seconds.

“Jean-Louis? Is that really you?”

His voice, oh god, he sounded exactly as he had all those years ago. Jean-Louis breathed in slowly, deeply, through his nose as if that would prevent him from completely losing it. “Guy-Man.” He covered his mouth to stifle his panic. Guy-Manuel!

“Mon dieu.” There was a long silence, and then Guy-Manuel’s voice, ragged, “I’ve waited so long for this…I thought it would never happen. Why did you wait so long?”

You left _me_! Jean-Louis wanted to shout. But it had been his own fault. He was the one who had ruined a perfect dream, not Guy-Manuel. He decided right then and there to come clean. “I-I married him.”

There followed an even longer silence. “ _Him?_ ” Guy-Manuel sounded mortified, disbelieving. “Why? How could you? Was it because of _me_? Did I do that to you?”

Jean-Louis could hear Guy-Manuel…gagging, choking sounds, like he was strangling himself. “No, not because of you. For my sister…for my child, for her children.” Jean-Louis had never told Guy-Manuel about the nature of his relationship with his sister, but perhaps Guy-Manuel would have guessed eventually, if they had stayed together. Charlotte had liked Guy-Manuel right off the bat when Jean-Louis had brought him to meet his family in Arbois one Easter. They had all loved Guy-Manuel. He was one of them, a boy whose parents—a Spanish father and a Vietnamese mother—were vintners. France had long-standing ties with Vietnam dating back to Colonial times and strong Catholic alliances with Spain dating much further back. Yes, Jean-Louis’s family had accepted Guy-Manuel in ways they would never accept James. But he had married James instead.

“Jean-Louis…we should talk, yes? Whatever you’ve done…can I see you again?”

***

“Ah, fuck me! Goddamn motherfucker!”

That was James providing his usual sparkling commentary after launching a majestic shot into the embankment above the scum pond. The ball had arched and whistled though the air off the tee and then landed with a dull thud into the leaf mold, prompting the six or so resident turtles that had been paddling about at the pond’s surface to take cover in deeper water. Other balls—a baker’s dozen practically—were scattered in among the scrub oaks lining the embankment, along with a discarded can of Red Bull, a plethora of cigarette butts, and some foil candy bar wrappers.

Jean-Louis masked a disgruntled sigh in a casual yawn. It was June 5th, James’s birthday, which meant that Jean-Louis had to roll out of bed at the crack of dawn to spend the entire morning playing golf with him and James’s younger brother Ted and Dontrell Wainwright, his former teammate and best friend on the Broncos. They were playing a round of four-ball and James was blowing it big time on the ninth hole, notorious for its tricky dogleg turn around a large bunker and steep slopes on all sides of the green. The women golfers always played this hole with sensible caution; nobody ever made par on it or even came close. The men, though, in typical testosterone-fueled lunacy, would attack it with reckless aggression, as if the difficulty of the hole was an affront to their masculine ego and they weren’t going to have it. True, if one could generate enough strength and speed at the tee and shoot the ball past the sand trap, then at least two or more strokes could be saved. Hook or slice the shot, though, and the ball would land in the scum pond or embankment to the left, or the stand of tall reeds to the right. Undershoot it and the ball went into the sand trap. Overshoot it and the ball rolled into the rough. Common sense or strategy had little bearing on James’s tried-and-true technique. He approached each shot with the mad self-righteousness of a man using a bazooka in a game of darts. After all, he reckoned, why should he bother with accuracy when he had megatons of power at his disposal? If he had gone into pro baseball instead of football, he would have been like a Barry Bonds or a Mark McGwire or an Andre Dawson at the plate, clobbering the shit out of the ball, and not like those sissies who hit for average and are satisfied with measly singles and walks. It would have been home run glory for him or zilch.

Jean-Louis, who was partnered up with James for the day, lit up a joint and leaned nonchalantly on his club as he waited for his turn. It was half past ten, but since he had arisen at the ungodly hour of six-thirty, he figured it wasn’t too early for a leisurely smoke. Besides, he was bored and irritable but didn’t want to spoil James’s day by sulking or making snide comments about his atrocious play. Pot always put him in a sweet frame of mind and there was no better time or place to partake than while loitering on the golf course. He took a long drag and then swung his club up behind his neck and stretched out his back and shoulder muscles, twisting to the left and to the right several times. He used just one club, a 2-iron bought at a Goodwill store in Aurora for a whopping six dollars. Jean-Louis had no idea if it was the “correct” club to use because he owned just the one, the 2-iron being the only club in the mismatched set that was meant for a left-handed person such as himself, so what did it matter? He had no real interest in playing golf with James in the first place. James hated to lose but did a consistently splendid job at it and would be in an even blacker mood if Jean-Louis _let_ him win when it was just the two of them. Now, he only accompanied James on his birthday, a concession he was willing to make for the sake of marital peace.

Of more importance to Jean-Louis than the mundane attempt at winning or losing was the chic figure he cut on the green. This morning, he was decked out in what he considered to be a good and proper golf outfit, a Halloween costume (or so he assumed since it had been packaged along with a Louis XIV-style wig) also purchased at the same Goodwill store. The pair of trousers, satiny in finish and dotted with a gold and purple fleur-de-lis pattern, had come with a gold velour vest with blue and orange embroidery depicting a charming Chinoiserie scene of pagodas, monkeys, and peony blossoms. Jean-Louis looked stunning, even without the wig. Not to be outdone, James was sporting a pair of green and yellow plaid shorts and a brown and white argyle sweater vest with no shirt underneath and they clashed spectacularly when they stood next to each other. Somehow, it all made an absurdly pretty picture. While Ted lined up for his shot, Jean-Louis decided to hunt around in the scrub beyond the rough for errant golf balls. He was slowly constructing a golf ball pyramid in the backyard—an homage to Khufu in miniature—and would have been done with it by now, if only the raccoons didn’t keep stealing them at night.

Jean-Louis knew nothing about golf aside from the fact that the modern day game was invented by the Scots and the more depressing fact that he’d have to suffer through a round of four-ball at least once a year when Ted and Dontrell would fly into Denver for James’s birthday. Then there would be the requisite swearing each time James played a hole. Ted and Dontrell would just groan and laugh and drink their beers and add to the litany of profanities echoing across the green. When it came time for Jean-Louis to take his turn, he went through his usual “routine,” that is, he silently recited the first stanza from Shelley’s _Ozymandias_ and, lo and behold, his shot landed right where he had directed it in his mind, such was the miraculous power of English Romantic poetry. Due to the law of averages, they stood a 50-50 chance that their drinks and steaks at the clubhouse afterwards would be on Team Ted-Donnie. Today, lunch was indeed on Ted and Dontrell, who had managed to hit into almost every hazard. Jean-Louis suspected that this was done more or less on purpose for James’s birthday; they knew what a glutton James was for winning.

They each ordered a Manhattan to start while they looked over the menu. Ted and Dontrell opted for the double queen cut prime rib, the special of the day, while James went for his usual porterhouse. Jean-Louis, hungry and pleasantly toasted, ordered the rib eye instead of his usual filet mignon, having a taste for something fatty. He had suffered through a lingering bout of walking pneumonia after his return from Japan and was finally on the mend and anxious to gain back some of the weight that he had shed during the illness. He would be in Barcelona in early July when James and the kids would be touring the University of Michigan campus—both Benjamin and Chloe would be applying to the school—before heading to Traverse City and he wanted to be presentable. The very prospect of seeing Guy-Manuel again after so many years made Jean-Louis smile into his drink.

James noticed him grinning and asked, “Oh, yeah? You think that’s amusing?” 

“C’est quoi?” _What is it_? Jean-Louis’s response was a dead giveaway.

“ _C’est quoi_?” James parroted. “You haven’t been listening to a single word we’ve been saying. Are we boring you?”

Ted grunted and laughed. “C’mon, bro. He’s French. Give him a break. What would he know about car racing?”

“Ah, yes. Car racing,” murmured Jean-Louis. They must have been talking about the Indy 500; Memorial Day was last week. James and his loud-mouthed buddies always watched it, that and the Daytona 500 and any number of NASCAR races. “We Europeans only have _little known_ races like the Mille Miglia or Le Mans or Le Gran Prix de Monaco. I myself prefer rally racing to Formula One or your stock car racing.”

The three burly men stared at him, befuddled. Then James said, “Name one fucking rally driver.”

Jean-Louis sliced into his steak and rattled off some names. “Sébastien Loeb, Petter Solberg, Colin McRae, Tommi Mäkinen, Jani Paasonen, Marcus Grönholm, Sébastien Ogier…”

“All right, all right,” James groaned. “Goddamn show-off.”

“So, Jean-Louis,” said Dontrell, deciding to get in on the fun, “you must have been a really popular kid in school. It’s a miracle you didn’t get fat from eating all of those knuckle sandwiches.”

James, Ted, and Donnie roared with laughter and shared celebratory high fives. Unperturbed, Jean-Louis smiled back at them and took a sip. He was into his third glass of wine and feeling quite content. These men were no different from his older brothers, men who existed very happily within the narrow confines of their self-made lives, lives dominated by sex, food, and sports or some other supremely physical activity, like weight training or wood chopping. Not that Jean-Louis had any aversion to those things, especially the sex, he just believed that life should encompass more than the mere satiation of the body. One should _know_ and _feel_ deeply, even if it meant suffering, anguish, misery. He knew that James thought him to be condescending, a snob and know-it-all and he never did refute such a view. Whatever. He had spent a lifetime perfecting a disdain of other people’s opinions of him. It had saved and shielded him time and again and today was no different.

“Knuckle sandwich?” asked Jean-Louis. “Hmm. I did get a black eye once in the schoolyard. Does that count? And then, there were those other times…” He looked squarely at James and James immediately dropped his eyes. Guilt was a powerful thing, and it made Jean-Louis laugh. “Don’t worry, James. I’m sure you had it far worse when you were playing your football. You never complained, and so…” Shit. It was James’s birthday and Jean-Louis was feeling magnanimous. He wouldn’t embarrass James in front of his brother and best friend. He smiled innocently and let the awkward moment pass. Besides, all that was in the past. James’s roughness with him had abated with time away from the game and Jean-Louis couldn’t imagine him ever raising a hand to him now. The kids would know and hold him accountable, and James wouldn’t be able to face their disappointment and anger. The question for Jean-Louis, though, was would he be able to face James’s disappointment and anger if he chose the wrong fork in the road once more.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was originally titled "Retracing One's Steps."


	18. Piece of Cake, Peace of Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James celebrates his birthday his way.

 

Birthdays for James meant several things, always in the same order: a morning round of four-ball on the golf course followed by a juicy steak in the clubhouse; an afternoon game of darts at his bar accompanied by more drinks; cake, champagne, and presents with the kids in the evening; and then, the best part later that night, no-holds-barred sex with Jean-Louis. Part one was won and done and now they were at James’s bar playing a terrible game of darts, terrible because James was paired up with Jean-Louis and Jean-Louis sucked at darts. He was bad enough when he was sober, even worse when he was hammered. And he was hammered.

“Why are you yelling at me?” Jean-Louis asked. He brought the glass of wine up to his lips and sipped, swaying just a little on his feet. “You _know_ I suck at this.”

James had to concede a point, but he wasn’t giving up without a fight. He had fifty dollars on the line and he sure as hell wasn’t going to lose on his birthday. “You’re not even _trying_ ,” he huffed angrily. “Just aim for the fucking bullseye! That red circle in the _middle_.”

Jean-Louis gripped the dart in his other hand, then turned to James and muttered, “You know I’m drunk, don’t you?”

“When _aren’t_ you drunk?” James shot back. “Now just concentrate, for fuck’s sake! You’re so goddamn good at everything else. How hard can this be? Even _I_ can do this!” He put his hands on Jean-Louis’s shoulders and oriented him in the right direction, that is, facing the dartboard instead of the bar. Meanwhile, Ted and Dontrell, who weren’t nearly as shitfaced because they were a good forty to fifty pounds heavier than Jean-Louis, were standing to the side chugging down their Coors and high fiving. They could practically taste victory on their tongues.

“That’s fifty dollars coming our way,” Dontrell smirked. “Enough to pay for two handjobs in this town.”

That comment was just enough to distract Jean-Louis, who missed the dartboard altogether. James swore a blue streak as Ted and Dontrell erupted in whoops of laughter.

“Pay up, motherfucker.” Dontrell held out his hand as James reluctantly took out his wallet and forked over a crisp fifty.

Much later that night, James murmured into Jean-Louis’s ear, “You owe me.”

“Oui,” Jean-Louis agreed, “two handjobs is it?” He reached down and unbuttoned James’s jeans. They were back home, in their bedroom with the door locked, the kids staying in the guesthouse playing the latest edition of Grand Theft Auto because, well, it was James’s birthday and they knew what was in store. By now, Jean-Louis also knew that two handjobs wouldn’t suffice. The room was spinning around him and he was flying high as a kite, so whatever it was that James was in the mood for was fine by him. He pushed his hand into James’s boxers, gripped his cock and squeezed too hard, mouthed roughly at James’s neck. “Do what you want, daddy. Make me cry.”

When James slammed him against the wall, he laughed. It was June, June 5th, Jean-Louis recited in his mind. In another month, he would be with Guy-Manuel, and the mere thought of it made Jean-Louis want to fall on his knees and beg forgiveness: from Guy-Man, from James, from God. What would he do when he saw Guy-Manuel? What would he do to atone for it afterwards? Why? Why couldn’t he just leave it be? So he resisted, because he knew James liked the game, knew he liked the challenge of _making_ him submit. When James pushed him onto his hands and knees on the floor by the bed, he whined, “Fuck me, James,” even as he tried to wriggle away. That earned him a firm slap on an ass cheek. “More, daddy! More!”

James bit into his shoulder, right at the meaty muscle that joins the neck, then sucked down hard as he pushed in, Jean-Louis’s loud “Ah! Ah!” echoing in the room.

“Take it,” James ordered, sinking in deep, one hand wrapped around Jean-Louis’s throat. “Take my cock. Take it all. You know you want it.” It was so good. Jean-Louis was shuddering beneath him, mewling and whimpering and gasping with every snap of James’s hips. “Fuck!” James gripped his shoulder with his other hand and started pounding, the obscene wet slap of skin against skin goading him to even more violent desire. This was what it was to be alive, to _feel_ alive in all its brief and brilliant glory. “You’re mine, baby. I fucking _own_ you.” And with that James came, chasing his own pleasure only. It was his birthday, after all. They would soak in the tub and then he’d put Jean-Louis on his knees again, have him suck his cock to his heart’s content first. Yeah. Then he’d fuck him again, as rough and messy as before, maybe take him up against the wall, slap him around, pull his hair, make Jean-Louis scream and come for him, because he was just that kind of guy.

The next morning, the kids made James his usual post-birthday breakfast: bacon and scrambled eggs served with a side of bacon and scrambled eggs. After eating with the children, James brought breakfast on a tray up to Jean-Louis: black coffee, buttered toast with damson jam, yogurt, and fresh mango diced into neat cubes. Jean-Louis always slept in late the morning after, too tired to come downstairs to eat but, really, James knew the bruises would be fresh and Jean-Louis didn’t like the kids to see him so wrecked. They sat on the balcony outside their bedroom on cushioned reclining lounge chairs, two of them pushed together, the breakfast tray over Jean-Louis’s lap. James watched him take slow, neat bites of toast, still groggy from sleep and too much alcohol. He hadn’t dressed for the day yet, was wearing a blue and white patterned yukata he had brought back from Japan. He had brought one back for James, too, but James felt silly wearing it; he didn’t cut quite the same elegant profile as Jean-Louis, who looked so lovely in it. Just knowing he was naked beneath the thin summer robe was enough to make James’s cock jump in his shorts. The sun was bright and a light breeze was blowing Jean-Louis’s hair in his eyes. He was keeping it a little longer again at James’s request; it was easier to grip and tug at that way, nicer to run his fingers through. James reached over and brushed his hair away from the side of his neck to reveal the new love bite James had left on him. Then he kissed his cheek tenderly.

“I didn’t hurt you too bad, did I?” asked James.

Jean-Louis smiled sweetly and took a sip of coffee. “No. You know I like it that way on your birthday.” That was true. He liked to see James go a little wilder than normal on his birthday, but this year he had other reasons, reasons involving a guilty conscience. “I…I think I’ll go to noon Mass today.” It had been ages since he had attended Mass on a Sunday, but Holy Ghost Church right in Denver was one of the few that still had a choir that sung hymns in Latin. “You can come with me if you want.”

“Nah. My knees are sore,” James replied with a smirk. He’d only ever been to a Catholic Mass once: the first time he had met Jean-Louis’s family in Arbois during Easter a lifetime ago it seemed. What an unpleasant experience that had been: first the weird Mass in Latin with all the genuflecting and choking incense, then the weird lamb served with a heaping pile of vitriol at dinner. “Hey, do you remember that Easter—”

“Yes, James,” Jean-Louis interrupted, “and I’d like to forget it, too.”

“Okay, okay.” James sat back and gazed out at the Rockies looming majestically on the horizon. He didn’t have to go to work until five and, after taking the entire day off the day before for his birthday, he was feeling self-indulgent. “You go to your Mass. How about we take a hike afterwards? Just you and me.”

“And Fritzel,” Jean-Louis added with a nod. He had gotten the Pomeranian for Chloe’s eighth birthday because she had seen one at the mall and just _had_ to have one of her own or she would _die_ as any girl would if deprived of something so adorable. Her rabid interest lasted all of two days, and then the dog became James’s responsibility. Luckily, Fritzel was small enough for James to bring with him to the bar and keep in a crate in his office while he was at work, and Rosa would take care of the dog whenever they were away on vacation. Rosa loved that dog like a grandchild, indulging him with her homemade beef empanadas and making him fat. “That dog needs to lose a pound or two.”

“Yeah,” James agreed. “I’m going to tie that little fucker up to the treadmill one of these days.” From his vantage point on the second floor balcony, James could see the dog taking golf balls from Jean-Louis’s miniature pyramid and then burying them in the yard like a squirrel does with acorns. “Hey, baby, you know how you think it’s the raccoons that are stealing the golf balls…”

***

“How’s life treating you these days?” Dr. Sidney Kogan waved James to the leather armchair and took the identical chair across from him. A mahogany coffee table separated the two men, providing a neutral zone of sorts. Dr. Kogan specialized in treating patients with addictions and compulsive disorders, be it drugs, alcohol, sex, food, whatever. Many of his clients were former or current athletes, hardly a surprise. Athletes were notorious for obsessive and neurotic behaviors; it was part and parcel of sports in general—the training and routines that had to be followed down to the letter—but the aggression and drive needed to succeed in professional competition often bled into their personal lives in contradictory and destructive ways. James had been referred to him by another patient, Andy, who was James’s bartender and an alcoholic. That Andy could be an alcoholic and manage to work at a bar was a testament to Dr. Kogan’s skill as a therapist.

“Just turned forty-seven on Saturday,” James grinned as he settled back and idly rubbed his palms against the carved wooden knobs at the end of each armrest. The wood was worn smooth as silk by countless other palms.

“Ah!” Dr. Kogan clapped his thick hands over his substantial belly. The man was a genius at treating others, but apparently couldn’t get his own love of food and drink under control. “So, you won!”

James shook his head, his grin turning sheepish. “They _let_ me win. They always do. Got a good steak out of it, though.” He always scheduled his annual sessions with Dr. Kogan the Tuesday following his birthday so he wouldn’t forget, but in the beginning his therapy sessions had been weekly. After James had returned to the States following Jean-Louis’s 'death'—at least, what he believed at the time to be Jean-Louis’s death—he had been beside himself, numb and lost and wanting only to sit at the bar and drink until the place closed and Andy would drive him home. Rosa would let them into the house and Andy would haul James to the sofa in the living room and deposit him there until he showed up the next evening and they would repeat the charade all over again. James’s friend Joe still ran the place and he hadn’t had the heart to turn him away knowing that James was grieving. Andy, though, decided to open his mouth when Marcel came into the picture. The twins were toddlers but Marcel was just a baby and Andy was worried about what would happen if the nanny weren’t there to watch over them. He’d gone through his own share of alcohol-induced blackouts, waking up not even remembering what had happened, waking up in his own piss and vomit, waking up to find his beloved retriever dying by the side of the curb, escaped from the front door he had failed to close in his drunkenness and struck by a car in the night.

“Dude, you gotta get help. There’s no shame in it. Here.” Andy had slipped him Dr. Kogan’s business card. “Make an appointment. He’s my therapist and he’s the real deal.”

James had grunted, scowled, tossed back another shot of bourbon with a red-eyed glare.

“You got three kids waiting for you at home,” Andy had kept on chiding. “Drinking yourself to death isn’t going to fix anything.” He hadn’t flinched when James looked angry enough to punch him in the face.

“Don’t talk to me about my fucking kids,” James had threatened in a rage, taking the business card off the counter and crushing it into a tight wad in his fist.

“Right. I’m sure he’d be thrilled with the way you’re taking such good care of them, especially that little one. Are you going to drag them all down with you?” No one likes to be shamed and made to feel guilty, but Andy knew James was digging himself into a deep pit with no end in sight. James was in pain, a lot more pain than Andy was in when James lunged over the counter and took a wild swing at him, catching him with a glancing blow to his left cheek. A direct hit would have broken his nose but, ironically, Andy escaped a more serious injury because James was so inebriated. And very apologetic afterwards, sobbing and promising to give this Dr. Kogan a call.

James had been furious the next day when he realized that he had agreed to see a freaking therapist, but a promise was a promise and James always stood by his word. So he had called and made an appointment and his life had slowly returned to some semblance of sanity over the course of that year and a half, before Jean-Louis returned and upended his life once more.

“And how’s the family?” asked Dr. Kogan.

The sessions had been sheer misery at first for James, but now that he had worked through the worst of it, he actually looked forward to telling Dr. Kogan about all the shit that had gone down since the last time he saw him, like a soldier recounts his battles after a very long and brutal deployment. There was the usual stuff about the children: Chloe’s slew of boyfriends, Benjamin’s baseball scholarship, Marcel’s obsession with all things Japanese.

“I can’t believe the twins will be going to college next fall. Shit. Where did the time go?”

“It’s hard to believe, I know,” Dr. Kogan agreed readily. “My youngest just graduated last month from Stanford. I still think of him as a baby. So, how are things with Jean-Louis?” This was the real reason for the annual visits, the real reason James had ever come to him in the first place. Initially, it was to help him through the grieving process. The drinking was just a coping mechanism, a temporary crutch; the actual addiction from which James was suffering was to Jean-Louis. He was still addicted, and these yearly check-ups were to gauge the current level of that addiction. Had it worsened? Lessened? No, not lessened. Dr. Kogan listened carefully as James told him about the incident at the ice rink where he had almost beat up a stranger, then the cause of the argument that had lead to the car accident, Jean-Louis’s injuries and James’s guilt, Chloe’s unfair blame, Jean-Louis turning over a new leaf since then.

“You know, ever since that accident, he hasn’t cheated on me. I know it. I always know if he’s been sleeping with Kerrie. And ever since he came back from Japan, he’s been…I don’t know, he’s been different.”

“Different like how?”

“Different like…calm…settled…at peace? Does that make sense? He said he visited a couple of Shinto temples while he was there and wrote these prayers onto these pieces of paper. It’s what they do there…anyway, he said he did that, kind of like how we make a wish on our birthday, and…I don’t know…maybe it worked. He’s seemed a lot happier. Shit, I don’t think we’ve had any big fights since he came back from Tokyo. Well, he did get sick. He had walking pneumonia for a month practically, but he’s good now.” And then, as a side note, James added, “Would you believe he told me he loved me? And not like those other times. This time, when he was in the hospital after the accident, he said it like he really meant it. He even called me his ‘husband’…how wild is that? He’s never done that before. Pretty amazing, huh?”

Dr. Kogan made some notations on his pad. He had never met Jean-Louis in person. He wasn’t a marriage counselor and didn’t treat couples, but he couldn’t help but wonder what kind of contradictory observations Jean-Louis would offer to counter everything James had told him. Monogamy was a very personal issue and there was no right or wrong, only self-delineated boundaries that had to be negotiated between people, but for James, fidelity was something that he associated with ownership and love, and his idea of love was interchangeable with obsession in practical terms. James was in love with Jean-Louis, that is, he was obsessed with him and clearly so even after all these years, and he still clung as desperately as ever to this notion of owning him, of insisting on monogamy, as if that were proof of love, his abiding, unshakeable love for Jean-Louis. “Yes, I would say that sounds rather amazing.” _Well, at least he hasn’t killed him yet_ , thought Dr. Kogan, _and if he hasn’t by now, then perhaps_ … “How are you sleeping?” he asked instead. “Any changes?”

“No, not really. Just some trouble after the accident. You know, I was worried about him. He was pretty beat up, but now…you wouldn’t even know. He’s just as…beautiful as ever.” He had no need to feel embarrassed. God knows he’d told Dr. Kogan everything about himself, about Jean-Louis. He wasn’t ashamed about the way that he felt, but he didn’t want to sound like some gushing teenaged girl either. “I’m sure you’re sick of hearing me say shit like that, aren’t you?”

“But I only hear it once a year now,” smiled Dr. Kogan. “James, I’d like you to do an exercise for me. I’d like you to take just a minute each day to think about your life without him. And before you jump to conclusions, I’m not asking you to imagine him gone, as in dead. All I’m saying is I want for you to meditate, as you will, on your own life, on your own frame of mind, apart from him. I want you to think about you, where you are in the moment, all the things that make you happy and complete, without Jean-Louis in the picture. Okay? Can you do that? Think of it as building up a muscle, strengthening it.”

“What the fuck muscle is that?” James asked with undisguised skepticism.

“Well, there’s no _actual_ muscle. I’m using a metaphor.”

“Seriously?” James shook his head and sighed at the ceiling. “Fine. Whatever. If you think it’ll help us, I’ll do it.”

“The goal is to help _you_ , James. You know that saying: nature abhors a vacuum? Well, if we remove something, such as an addiction, then it’s best to replace it with something of our own choosing rather than letting some random element take its place. Do you see?”

“No. Maybe. I’ll give it a shot, okay? Just don’t ask me to let him go. Because I won’t.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking so long to update. Life has been too busy and on top of that, it's hockey playoffs and the start of the baseball season and I have almost no time for writing. I know: excuses, excuses.


	19. Closing Ranks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James questions the path he's chosen and is surprised when he discovers a rift between him and Marcel.

 

James stepped up to the pharmacy counter at Walgreens and handed over his script. The twins now had driving permits and Dr. Kogan agreed that James needed to calm the fuck down. Or maybe it was Dr. Kogan’s way of treating James’s anxiety without making him take offense. It was just the kids making him nuts, after all—any parent raising teenagers would feel the same worries about texting and driving, about getting them out of high school and into college, about keeping them safe until they were adults—and not the lies James told himself to make all the cheating bearable.

“Would you like to wait or pick up later?” asked the pharmacist. “It’ll be around fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll wait,” James said. He sat on one of the chairs upholstered in brown vinyl and wondered if Dr. Kogan believed him when he said that Jean-Louis had been faithful as of late, that he was a different person since he returned from Japan: contrite, strangely obedient, like a dog that suddenly deigned to follow his master’s commands. _He’s not cheating anymore, hasn’t in a while_. If he said it enough times, would it come true? Could he _will_ it into being true? And what did it really matter? As much as it hurt him, it would never be a deal breaker for James, even though his friends had tried and failed to convince him that it should be reason enough to throw Jean-Louis onto the trash heap. Instead, James found himself defending his sorry position with explanations that he didn’t even believe himself: he’ll come around, he’s French, he’s spoiled, he’s insane, he can’t help himself. They were all excuses, appalling, humiliating excuses, but it was still better than the alternative, which was _nothing_. No Jean-Louis. Nothing. And James would rather keep drinking the poison than imagine a life without Jean-Louis in it.

 _That’s not love_ , people told him, but what did they know about love? His best friend Donnie, who was married and divorced three times and an admitted horndog who had been unfaithful to each and every wife, had told James the hard truth: “Some guys just aren’t meant to be with one person.” Yeah, guys like Donnie, guys like Jean-Louis, guys who couldn’t keep it in their pants…how the fuck was that supposed to help him? Was that supposed to make him feel better? Was that supposed to convince him to walk away? Oddly enough, James’s mother Laura had never questioned him about their relationship. She had been as shocked as anyone else when James first came out with it (“Guess what? I’m fucking a dude! Surprise!”), but after she met Jean-Louis, she told James once, and only once, to end it. “Do right by him, or let him go,” she had said or something to that effect. Then she never brought up the idea of a break-up again, even after all the chaos and violence and misery of the ensuing years, she never told James to leave Jean-Louis and find someone better suited to monogamy. They weren’t suited at all and, yet, she knew that when James claimed that Jean-Louis was the only one for him, he was telling the truth. But the truth can be awfully bitter on the tongue.

***

It was brutally hot that summer in Traverse City, the heatwave taking hold suddenly after an unusually long and cool spring. The black flies, which normally hatched in May or early June and were always a nuisance, were proving to be an epic bane in July, almost on the scale of some biblical plague. Even James, who normally tolerated the stinging bites, hid inside the cabin with the kids under the ceiling fans trying to stay cool and bug-free. Benjamin and Chloe were in their bedrooms and on their phones, texting and chatting with their friends back home. Benjamin was still with the same girl he had hooked up with in ninth grade, a freckled redhead named Rebecca but whom everyone called Bex. They’d likely get married at some point and James was fine with that. He was grateful that at least one of his kids would lead a normal life. Chloe…James couldn’t even remember her current boyfriend’s name. He had given up on her, especially when she brought home a girl from school one day and claimed she was her lover. Right. James had refused to let Chloe go on a school trip to Italy in the spring. One of the Italian language instructors was leading the group to Rome for a week of language and culture immersion but James didn’t trust Chloe to stay out of trouble, especially in a place like Rome, where he imagined every guy was looking to jump a girl’s bones. His lovely blond-haired blue-eyed barely seventeen-year-old daughter was jail-bait as far as he was concerned.

“It’s not like I’m a virgin, Dad. If I want to fuck someone, I’ll fuck someone!” Chloe had shouted when James denied her request. The yelling didn’t exactly help her cause. Out of spite, she had pretended to have a girlfriend, but that lasted all of one afternoon. James didn’t believe her and she knew it. It wasn’t entirely her fault that she changed boyfriends like clothes, but a habit once established can be hard to break. She didn’t have the benefit of a mother to tell her that a revolving door policy in the romance department wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Her brother Benjamin was still dating the same girl for over three years—out of sheer laziness, in Chloe’s jaded opinion. The girl, Bex, had seen him pitch at a baseball game and had flirted with Ben afterwards and then asked him out. His response had been, “Sure, why not?” Not exactly fireworks in July, but the relationship had stood the test of time, or simply gone on and on because Ben was not one to overthink things.

“What’s some other girl got that Bex doesn’t?” Ben had said in defense of his lack of adventure. “I’m pretty sure one pussy feels the same as another.”

Marcel, meanwhile, was busy hiding the fact that he was totally gaga over some foreign boy, Kensuke, and Chloe was not going to let on because Marcel was petrified of their Dad finding out. Chloe understood his reticence to come clean with James, having endured her father’s rabid dislike of any boyfriend she had dared bring home for inspection. James would normally address the boy as ‘cock-flogger’ or ‘dickhead’ or, if he was being nice, ‘maggot’ perhaps. Which was why Chloe didn’t feel she should take full blame for the lack of longevity in her own love life. If her father was going to drive a boyfriend away through intimidation, then she would just find another one. What was the big deal about longevity anyway? Her parents had stuck it out all these years and what did it get them? Screaming fights, busted furniture, punched-in walls, her Papa battered and bruised, her Dad seething and red-faced with fury. Was that so much better? They pretended not to notice, she and Ben and Marcel, but her parents were idiots if they thought they were hiding anything from them. Children see everything. In another year, she and Benjamin would be in college and out of the house. Only Marcel would be left at home with those two lunatics, but Marcel was resourceful. He would survive. He had to, because she wouldn’t be there to protect him anymore.

***

It was just them this year in Traverse City. James’s parents had stayed behind in Grosse Pointe because his father Peter had undergone knee replacement surgery and was determined to stick to his physical therapy schedule, a good thing everyone agreed, and his brother Ted was taking his family to visit his wife Meredith’s parents in Ireland to celebrate their fortieth wedding anniversary. This might be the last time they do this, thought James. He sat at the table in the living room with Marcel playing checkers. Marcel was beating the pants off of him. Jean-Louis wasn’t even coming to Traverse City at all this year. He had a business trip to Madrid, and then he was going to see his uncle, who had suffered a fall and broken his arm. It was going to be a long lonely month, but James had been practicing his one-minute-a-day meditation sessions, just like Dr. Kogan had instructed, and it was helping him keep it together, that and the Xanax.

“I win, Dad.” Marcel slumped back in his chair and yawned. “That’s six out of six. Want to go again?”

James grunted. “Sure, one more time. Seven’s a lucky number, right?” He watched Marcel reset the board and took another sip of beer.

Marcel was fifteen now, his hair as unruly as ever, honey-gold and shoulder length, his face retaining some babyishness in the soft curve of his cheeks and the pout of his lips, but showing all the signs of soon-to-be maturity nevertheless in the seriousness of his eyes, the deepening of his voice. He was lean and lanky, with the quick movements of boys his age, all that energy coiled inside a body stretching towards the sky. A pang rippled through James’s heart. He had watched the twins grow up, often with trepidation, but always with an eagerness to see what they would become as adults. Looking at Marcel now, though, he wished he could stop time, preserve the boy as he was—innocent, intact, not quite fully formed—because once the process was complete, he’d emerge from the chrysalis, unfold his wings, and fly off, fly away. He was willing to let the twins go—they had _always_ been his—but Marcel…the boy had been a godsend when James was at his lowest point. He had come into his life like a ray of sunshine and pulled him out of the darkness. As much as Jean-Louis had tortured James, Marcel had been a salve to his wounds. Marcel had never defied him, screamed invectives at him, made him feel inadequate or stupid. God knows, the boy at fifteen was way smarter than James was at forty-seven, but all the brains in the world couldn’t guarantee happiness, a good life, the right choices made at the right times. He thought of Jean-Louis, who was smart as a whip but behaved in ways that James couldn’t fathom, did things that were unforgiveable by any moral standards. Well, unforgiveable by _his_ moral standards, at least, and the moral standards of _sane_ people.

“You got a girlfriend yet?” asked James. He was teasing him, but he also wanted to know. The boy had been hanging out with that Kensuke kid all spring and it was high time he broadened his social horizons. “Anyone you got a crush on?”

Marcel’s eyes shot up to James’s face. “Have you been talking to Chloe?” he asked, his voice cracking.

Well, that was interesting. James brought the bottle to his lips and took another gulp, choking down a grin. “No,” he replied casually. “Should I be? What does your sister know that I don’t?” Marcel crossed his arms over his chest and wriggled uncomfortably in his seat. This was definitely interesting. “C’mon, Marcel. You know you can tell your old man anything. There’s nothing you’re going through that I haven’t gone through already, so, out with it.”

They’d had plenty of father-son talks in the past about all sorts of things: girls and sex and wet dreams and masturbation, all that birds-and-the-bees bullshit, and James had always been surprised by how unsqueamish Marcel was about such embarrassing topics. This evasiveness from him was a new thing. James tried again, keeping his tone lightly sarcastic. “If you’re banging some chick, you better be using protection, that’s all I’m saying. You know how to use a rubber, right? They taught that in sex ed already, didn’t they?”

“Yes, Dad, I know how to use a rubber.” Marcel sighed and half-heartedly made a move on the board. “Your turn.”

James reached out and blindly moved a black checker. “So, are you?”

“What?”

“Banging some chick?”

“No!” That rare shout in anger was followed by a stifled groan. And then Marcel burst into tears. “Don’t ask me again!” He wiped at his eyes, blubbering. “May I go to my room now?”

“Yeah.” Now what? James was fairly stunned, then he remembered all the fits that Chloe had thrown and continued to throw. Even Benjamin could be gnarly on bad days. Wasn’t Marcel allowed to suffer meltdowns, too? In another minute, Chloe was out in the living room wagging a finger at him.

“What did you do to Marcel?” she accused. “Did you know he’s crying?”

“I didn’t do anything,” James told her. He stood up and headed to the kitchen for another beer.

“Liar!” she shot back, following behind him. “He doesn’t cry for nothing! What did you say to him?”

“Okay, Miss Know-It-All, I asked him if he was ba—…I asked him if he had a girlfriend, that’s all.”

“What? Why would you do something like that?” She reached around him and grabbed a beer out of the fridge too, ignoring James’s scowl of disapproval.

“Why shouldn’t I? I’m his father, I deserve to know what my kids are doing under my own fucking roof!” He pointed to his chest and declared, “It’s my right!”

Before she knew what she was saying, the words were out of her mouth: “No, Dad. You’re _my_ father, you’re _Ben’s_ father, but you’re NOT Marcel’s. _Papa_ is.”

He nearly choked on his beer, dribbling half of it down the front of his own shirt. “You…you know that? Who told you?”

“Oh my god, you’ve got to be kidding me.” She laughed contemptuously and took a sip before she went on. “We’re not all blind like you. I’m mean, _look_ at him. Ben and I have known it since forever. Do you really think…” She felt tears prickling her eyes. Poor Marcel. Her poor baby brother. “Don’t you think he’s got enough to deal with? Don’t you think he deserves to be who he is without…without you badgering him? Without you _judging_ him?”

“Who says I’m judging him? I’m not judging him!” Good grief, James thought. “Why are you even saying that?”

Chloe huffed derisively. “You say that now. Just you wait, then we’ll see who’s judging who.” She turned her back on her father, leaving him standing next to the fridge with his mouth hanging open, and went to her room, slamming the door shut. Marcel was on her bed curled up into a ball. “Hey.” She shook him gently, made him sit up. When she offered him the bottle of beer, he accepted it and took a long swallow.

“He’s going to find out,” Marcel said glumly. He passed the bottle back to her and wiped his face again. “He’s going to kill me.”

“Don’t worry, baby brother,” Chloe assured. She leaned in and kissed him on the forehead, brushed his hair out of his face. God, he was so beautiful, so pure. Her Papa must have looked just like this at Marcel’s age. “If he tries to kill you, he’ll have to do it over my dead body.”

 


	20. Through the Looking Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A trip down memory lane leads to some painful but necessary realizations for both Jean-Louis and his former lover, Guy-Manuel.

 

Madrid was hot as hell that July, with temperatures soaring into the nineties by noon. Jean-Louis had three days of meetings with the executives at Compañia Española de Petróleos at their headquarters—in air-conditioned rooms, fortunately—and then he took the Iberia Air Shuttle to Barcelona, which was no less an inferno despite being on the coast. He didn’t tell James that he was stopping over in Barcelona before going to Arbois to visit his mother and uncle, didn’t tell him that he had booked a room at the Hotel Pulitzer and was going to meet Guy-Manuel for drinks, dinner…who knows what else. It had been torturous enough to be on good behavior ever since the Japan trip, playing the role of a child—normally bratty, recalcitrant—who obeys his parents in the few weeks leading up to Christmas so Santa will bring him the desperately desired gift. Did he feel guilty? No.

It was three-thirty in the afternoon when he arrived at his hotel, which sat right off the Plaça Catalunya, on the border of the Old City. Guy-Manuel had selected a restaurant located nearby on La Rambla, one of numerous places serving tapas and alcohol. They were to meet at ten o’clock, a perfectly normal dinner time for locals; that gave Jean-Louis several hours to relax after a hectic few days. The cool air of the spacious hotel lobby with its plush seating and high ceilings was a welcome respite from the brutal sun and heat, and the first thing he did when he was in his room, after giving his linen suit to the porter for a quick steam and press, was peel off his travel clothes and jump into the turquoise-tiled bathroom for a much-needed shower. Then he promptly fell asleep on the bed after drinking the two small bottles of water in his room.

The alarm on his phone beeped at eight-thirty, waking him from a four-hour nap that left him feeling both refreshed and fuzzyheaded. He took another shower, shaved, and dressed carefully after the suit was delivered to his room. The suit was a fine linen and silk blend in dove grey with vertical pinstripes in dark grey, tailor-made for him in London, and worn with a light yellow and blue floral print vest. He chose a tie with a paisley pattern in blue, the same blue as his eyes, a tie that his friend and old lover Oliver Williams had left with him years ago when Oliver had moved from New York to Edinburgh. Jean-Louis checked himself in the mirror, running his palms down the smooth fabric, and was pleased. He had managed to gain back some of the weight he had lost from the bronchial infection suffered two months prior, was none the worse for wear he hoped. He allowed himself to wonder what Guy-Manuel would look like. They had kept their communication to a minimum after that phone call in Tokyo, just texts that were businesslike and brief; in reading them, one wouldn’t even know that they had a history together, had shared the deepest intimacy, had been madly in love.

At a quarter to ten he made his way down the hallway to the bank of elevators. It would take only a few minutes to walk to the restaurant and people in Barcelona were notoriously late to everything. Perhaps he should make a pit stop at the bar downstairs for a quick apéritif? He made it as far as the lobby and then he was overcome with dizziness, the room pitching about wildly as in one of those nightmares where he found himself in a stairwell that was caught in a tornado. He reached blindly for the wall and grabbed onto something, a leather loveseat, and hauled himself into it before his legs gave out completely, and sat slumped on the cushions, breathing erratically, shutting his eyes when he found that keeping them open made him feel even more nauseated. When he finally felt his heart racing a little slower, he took out his phone, thinking and thereby willing the action, “I should call Guy-Man, tell him I can’t make it.” In his shaking hand, the phone read quarter to eleven. Good lord, how could an hour have elapsed? There were four texts from Guy-Manuel: _im here_ , then _still here_ , then _r u coming?,_ then _r u lost?_ Finally, his phone rang and it startled him enough to push aside the dizziness for a few seconds.

“Guy-Man, I’m sorry. I’m not well,” Jean-Louis managed to say weakly. “I’m still at the hotel.”

He must have sounded terrible, because Guy-Manuel didn’t presume that it was a lie, that Jean-Louis was merely chickening out at the last minute. “You’re at the Pulitzer, right? On Bergara? I know where it is. I’ll be right there.”

“I-I’m in the lobby…by the bar. I’m wearing a grey suit…and a—”

“For Christ’s sake, Jean-Louis,” Guy-Manuel interjected. “I think I can remember what you look like. Just stay put. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Jean-Louis clutched the phone to his chest with a groan. One of the hotel staff, a young man with a name tag reading Ramón, approached and asked him if he needed anything, something from the bar, perhaps? Jean-Louis smiled and replied, “A glass of water, please. I’m expecting someone.”

“I’ll bring two glasses, then.” In a few minutes, Ramón returned with two glasses, a carafe of sparkling mineral water with lemon slices on the side, a small dish of spiced almonds, and a menu from the bar. He poured water into one of the glasses and handed it to Jean-Louis, who took it and sipped gratefully. Then Ramón retreated to the bar with a backwards glance, but the man in the grey suit had already closed his eyes.

He must have blacked out again because the next thing he knew someone was shaking him by the shoulder. Jean-Louis looked up and there he was, Guy-Manuel, standing over him with concern on his face. Jean-Louis was too shocked to say anything at first, which was odd, because all he’d been doing for the past two months practically was think about Guy-Manuel and what he would say to him in person after all these years. Would he have changed? Would he look old? Fat? Ugly? Well, he didn’t look old, fat, or ugly and that alone was enough to confuse the hell out of Jean-Louis, the fact that Guy-Manuel hadn’t changed in any appreciable way. How could he still look the same? Guy-Manuel sat down on the loveseat next to him, Jean-Louis staring back at him, silent and wide-eyed. Was he dreaming? Was he still passed out and dreaming? Guy-Manuel took the glass out of Jean-Louis’s hand and set it on the coffee table in front of them. He had been clutching it to his chest, glass in one hand, phone in the other.

“Should I call a doctor?” asked Guy-Manuel. He reached out and pressed the back of his hand to Jean-Louis’s forehead and that very real touch made Jean-Louis know at last that he wasn’t dreaming. “You feel a little warm…but it _is_ summer…and…” Guy-Manuel looked Jean-Louis up and down, “…did you get all dressed up for _me_?”

It was only then that Jean-Louis noticed what Guy-Manuel was wearing: a blue, red, and gold FC Barcelona short-sleeve jersey, a pair of dark blue shorts, and brown leather loafers without socks. He looked like a typical, casually dressed tourist in the city who happened to be a Lionel Messi fan. The truth was, Guy-Manuel had to dress in suits for work—he was a marketing director now and in meetings with clients all day—but in the evenings he liked to be comfortable, especially when it was still in the low eighties at night and, yes, he was an ardent supporter of his city’s football club. He didn’t expect Jean-Louis to go out of his way to impress him. They had never been formal with each other in the past, had always addressed each other with _tu_ instead of _vous_.

Guy-Manuel said it first. “You look the same, Jean-Louis. I mean…a little older, of course, but…what is it they say? With more character?” He laughed, as if he were also pleasantly surprised. His smile, though, was tinged with sadness. “What about me? Am I…?”

“You’re…everything...I’ve been…dreaming about.” The words came out broken, like static on the radio. Jean-Louis closed his eyes again and compared the two images side-by-side: Guy-Manuel as he was then, twenty-one and the center of his universe, and Guy-Manuel as he was now, sitting on the sofa with him. Almost twenty years separated the two images, almost twenty years of regret and yearning, of rejection and now reunion, of that boy and this man, one and the same. Yes, there were differences if he looked closely: a squarer jaw and heavier brow, a harder set to his mouth and eyes, but those changes were slight, as superficial as the few crow’s feet that materialized now when Guy-Manuel smiled. He had been dew-kissed and beautiful at twenty-one; at nearly forty, Guy-Manuel was undeniably mature and handsome, and the light summer clothes he was wearing revealed a body still lean and fit.

“I could say the same for you.” Guy-Manuel was staring back at him. “I admit I was nervous about this. Seeing you again after all this time…I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do.” He cast his eyes aimlessly about the room, lost in thought for a few moments.

“I know.” Jean-Louis sat up straighter, struggling to rally his wits, to focus. “Do you mind if we stay here to eat? We can order from the bar. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but—” 

“Yes. It’s fine. Let’s.” He helped Jean-Louis up, walked him over to the spacious bar with its display of local pottery above the rows of bottles and glasses. There was an even nicer rooftop terrace at the hotel, but Jean-Louis was too unsteady on his feet for that trek. Maybe later.

Ramón came over and took their order—grilled sardines and octopus, chick peas and lamb meatballs, eggplant in a minted yogurt sauce, thin slices of Serrano ham and manchego cheese—while the bartender opened a bottle of Granache for them. After the first sip or two, Jean-Louis perked up, color returning to his cheeks. The room began to still and settle like a leaf coming to rest on the grass in autumn. They talked. Guy-Manuel hadn’t known about Jean-Louis’s illness. The lymphoma had been diagnosed two years after they had broken up. Guy-Manuel’s own wife, Amelia, had died of ovarian cancer four years ago. Guy-Manuel’s second wife, Beatriz, was six months pregnant with their first child together. His two children with Amelia were now seventeen and fifteen. 

“Same here,” Jean-Louis told him. They switched phones, swiping through each other’s photo albums of their children, of vacations taken, birthdays celebrated, lives lived. It was painful to see what they had missed about the other, to know what they could have had together. Or could they have?

“Have you ever thought…about us?” asked Guy-Manuel. “If we had stayed together, what our lives would have been?”

 _Of course!_ That is what Jean-Louis wanted to say. _How can you even ask?_ But it dawned on him that he had never actually contemplated that, that imaginary life in some fairytale world. The truth was, after the break-up, he had never been able to think about Guy-Manuel as existing in a future sense. It was as if time had stopped that day in the café not far from where they were sitting at the bar eating and drinking right now, nearly eighteen years ago in late July when Guy-Manuel had broken his heart, smashed it to pieces as surely as Sophie had done so previously, and the Guy-Manuel who appeared in his mind afterwards was a boy who had ceased to move forward since that time, since that moment of soul-crushing rejection, a boy who was preserved like a butterfly in a sterile vitrine, never growing old, removed from life, from reality, sealed in the anaerobic vacuum of his memory. He was going to marry Amelia, Guy-Manuel had told him that horrible day. He was going to marry her and have children with her. _They_ were going to be together, Guy-Manuel and Amelia. Jean-Louis was cast into the wilderness, but Guy-Manuel would remain rooted to that moment, captured as in a photograph, just as he was: so lovely, his beauty frozen in time.

Even his demeanor had remained intact, the open expressiveness of his face, the softness of his voice, that hint of shyness that underlay all of it. It was terrible. It would have been so much easier, even if it were so disappointing, to see him much changed, perhaps bald or overweight, with bad skin and missing teeth, a body and mind ruined by an unhealthy lifestyle, but there was none of that, nothing to mar the perfect image that had burned itself into Jean-Louis’s mind from the moment he had first seen Guy-Manuel, down to the day Guy-Manuel had tossed him aside. There were more, though, more than mere appearances to reconcile in his head. There were all the things they had done since then, the choices they had made, one action leading to another, so many steps that had carried each of them on different paths, only to converge again at this moment in time. What of that? Was there any forgiveness at the confluence of those two roads taken separately?

In the end, he couldn’t tell Guy-Manuel about his relationship with Charlotte. What good would it do for either of them? It certainly had nothing to do with Guy-Manuel, although it _might_ have if they had stayed together. Or maybe not. Who knows? Would it have helped Guy-Manuel accept Jean-Louis’s explanation for going back to James if he knew the truth about Marcel? Maybe. Maybe not. That wasn’t even the stumbling block for Guy-Manuel. 

“That man…” Guy-Manuel wouldn’t say his name and it made Jean-Louis laugh inside. In that way, Guy-Manuel was like his mother Catherine, like all of Jean-Louis’s family. They would have gotten along famously if things had played out differently. But they hadn’t. Things had played out exactly as they did. “That man…” Guy-Manuel said again, his voice quavering with a bitterness that had been little altered by time, “…he _raped_ you. He raped you.” Guy-Manuel took a big gulp of wine to wash down the vomit that threatened to come up his throat. “He made me _watch_.” He shook his head, the memory still clear in his mind. He had been fairly stoned, they both were, when James had barged uninvited into Jean-Louis’s New York apartment all those years ago, but nothing, no drug certainly, could have erased the horrific scene that unfolded like a nightmare that day. “I can’t believe you married him. Even if it was for your child. You could have taken a shotgun to his head, blown it to fucking smithereens. Taken your son and left.” It was ridiculous to say such a thing, but Guy-Manuel said it anyway. It deserved to be said aloud, even if the act should never be committed. “I’m sorry I hurt you, Jean-Louis. I’m sorry I didn’t have it in me to stand by you. I’m not that strong. I was selfish. I was scared. I didn’t want to face you again. I didn’t want to go through _that_ again.” He chugged the rest of his glass down and refilled it. He wanted to cry so badly but the anger, the anger needed to come out first. “Did you hate me so much that you would do that to yourself? Give yourself to that bastard?”

Jean-Louis felt amazingly calm. Guy-Manuel was twitching, shaking with rage, but Jean-Louis was floating in a bubble of serenity. Very strange indeed. He took another sip of wine, savoring the tannins on his tongue, aglow with a weird sort of bliss. “I have never hated you, Guy-Man. How could I? I’ve only _ever_ loved you…so very much. I will _always_ love you.” 

“I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about _you_. And _him_. God.” Guy-Manuel shook his head again, as if that would help him to understand Jean-Louis. “If we had stayed together…fuck…would you have ever gotten rid of that monumental piece of shit? All the time we were together…you were still fucking him, you were still _with_ him, weren’t you? You never told him ‘no,’ did you?” Jean-Louis was silent, listening closely but not answering, and that did it for Guy-Manuel. It was as good as screaming from a mountaintop. Guy-Manuel cried now, sobbing quietly, “You never really chose me over him, did you? Did you think you could have us both? That it could go on like that forever? All this time I blamed myself, I blamed myself for not having the courage to stop him, for letting him _do_ that to you. I didn’t think I deserved to be with you after that. I had failed you so badly. But that wasn’t it, was it? You would have never pushed him away. Even if I had stayed with you, you wouldn’t have pushed him away. And now…you’ve been with him all this time. _Married_ to him. I can’t believe it. I just can’t.”

Before Jean-Louis could cobble together any words, Guy-Manuel hopped off his stool and disappeared down the hallway towards the men’s room. Their second bottle of wine was empty but rather than order a third bottle, Jean-Louis asked the bartender for some espresso. He figured they’d both need it. It was another ten minutes before Guy-Manuel came back looking exhausted and red-faced.

“I’m going to go now,” said Guy-Manuel. “It’s late, and I have an early meeting with a client tomorrow.”

“I understand. Guy-Man…” Jean-Louis stood up and put his hands on Guy-Manuel’s shoulders. He wanted to kiss him, comfort him, but there was no going back in time to make reparation. The illusion was shattered. Guy-Manuel had walked right through the looking glass and destroyed that view into the past. For the first time in his memory, Jean-Louis felt free, free to move forward. He didn’t need to be forgiven, he didn’t need to find salvation, though he craved the punishment. He needed someone to show him what he really was, to be the mirror that reflected all his flaws back at him, like Perseus holding up the polished shield and he, Jean-Louis, could finally see his own Gorgon’s head staring back at him at last. He was an abomination, yes, it was true, he’d always known it but never saw it for himself, not really, not until the boy he had loved so madly, a boy as pure as Jean-Louis was filthy, dared to hold up that shield and make him see the mass of vipers that was his crowning glory. Yes, he was an abomination, and James still loved him. After all, who could love a monster like him, _want_ him, except another monster like James? It was all starting to make sense. Jean-Louis kissed Guy-Manuel on the cheeks, like any man would do in Barcelona, embraced him with genuine affection. “Guy-Man, my sweet darling, you have saved me.” He gazed into Guy-Manuel’s eyes, eyes as dark as a night sky and glistening with tears like sparkling stars, and kissed him again. “Will you smile for me before you go? For old time’s sake?”

So Guy-Manuel smiled, his lips pale and still trembling. “We’ll see each other again some day?”

“No,” Jean-Louis smiled back. “Tonight, we set each other free.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is such a pivotal point in Jean-Louis’s character development at this stage of the story, but I’m not sure if it even makes sense if you haven’t read the previous story (Stoppages) since Jean-Louis’s relationship with Guy-Manuel is explained fully there. If you think this chapter doesn’t work without more details, let me know and I’ll try to fix it.
> 
> The next chapter, which is really a Part Two to this chapter, will be posted in a few days.


	21. In the Garden of Earthly Delights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of his meeting with Guy-Manuel, Jean-Louis finds solace with a stranger.

 

He watched the back of Guy-Manuel disappear out the door of the hotel and into the night. And out of his life, probably for good this time. The lump of melancholy sitting in Jean-Louis’s throat took up residence in his gut when he swallowed it down with the last of the espresso. He had Ramón charge the bill to his room and then he made his way slowly up to the rooftop terrace. It was past midnight, but the terrace was crowded with tourists, mainly couples in love it seemed to Jean-Louis, who stood off to the side smoking a cigarette, leaning on the railing and gazing at La Sagrada Familia. The façade of Gaudí’s unfinished church was lit up to reveal its sand castle-like appearance, its attenuated towers stretching like beseeching fingers to heaven. Was God even watching? Listening? Caring about the silly lives of people? Guy-Manuel was out there somewhere, going home to his pregnant wife and two teenaged children. It was only now, after almost twenty years, that Jean-Louis understood how deeply Guy-Manuel had been traumatized by the events of that day. It had meant so little to Jean-Louis, what James had done to him; he had never realized how much it had meant to Guy-Manuel, how much it had hurt him, never realized how his own flippant attitude—his arrogance, really, what his brother Paul saw as greed—had destroyed the love of his life, destroyed _them_ and everything they could have had together if he hadn’t been an idiot. He didn’t deserve Guy-Manuel’s devotion. He had taken his innocent love for granted, squandered it and lost it like the fool that he was.

He made his way back to the elevators inside, then to his room on the third floor. There was a knock on the door as he was hanging up his suit jacket in the closet. Jean-Louis had his finger on the top button of his vest, wondering, “Did Guy-Man change his mind? Does he want to stay the night with me? Will he let me make love to him?” His mind was racing ahead even as he took hesitant steps to the door. One look through the peephole sent all his hopes crashing to the floor. It wasn’t Guy-Manuel. It was Ramón from the bar in the lobby. Jean-Louis quickly rearranged his face into something placid rather than wrecked with disappointment and opened the door.

“Yes?”

“Good evening, sir,” Ramón said with a friendly smile. “I’m just finishing my shift and I was wondering…if there is anything you need? Anything I can do for you?” Ramón was speaking in French to Jean-Louis now, even though Jean-Louis had spoken in fluent Spanish downstairs when Ramón had waited upon him and Guy-Manuel. Jean-Louis realized with some dismay that Ramón must have understood his conversation with Guy-Manuel; they had spoken in French, as they had always done with each other when conversing privately, and now this Ramón likely knew that Guy-Manuel had been his lover. As if to put Jean-Louis at ease, Ramón continued, again in French, “You seemed unwell downstairs. If you would like, I can sit with you for a while. If you would like…to have a friendly talk, a little company.” _Une conversation amicable, un petit compagnon_. In other words, as sung by Patti LaBelle in the seventies: _Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?_

Well, was he in the mood for sex? This wouldn’t be the first time Jean-Louis had enjoyed extramarital relations with an attractive hotel staff member on his many travels, and Ramón was undoubtedly attractive: mid to late twenties, black wavy hair, a short, neatly trimmed beard, dark brown eyes, very nice smile, tall and lanky.

“Aren’t I a little old for you?” asked Jean-Louis. He was being facetious, but figured he’d give this Ramón a way out, give _himself_ a way out of yet another potentially bad decision. God, he was so fucking hopeless.

Ramón tilted his chin up, an assertive gesture meant as a challenge, and grinned, “I prefer my men to be like a good wine: well-aged and smooth on the tongue.”

It was a lame pick-up line, but Ramón was young and Jean-Louis could only groan to himself. God knows what embarrassing things he had said when he was in his twenties. So he stepped aside and waved Ramón into the room. “Excuse me, but I need to wash up,” Jean-Louis said, loosening his tie. “Make yourself comfortable.” Then he went into the bathroom and emptied his bladder, washed his face, brushed his teeth, trying to calm his mind. He didn’t want to think about his meeting with Guy-Manuel, the words exchanged, the wounds laid bare again after so many years, the feelings that ached inside him. He was free now, wasn’t he? Free to go forward, free to go home to James and finally love him for what he was, for what they _both_ were, so why let Ramón, a stranger, into his hotel room? Why muddy the water again and so soon? “Pourquoi?” Jean-Louis asked himself, staring into the mirror. “Qui es-tu?” _Who are you?_

Ramón was lying on the bed when Jean-Louis came out of the bathroom, naked and idly palming an already rigid cock, a lit joint in his other hand. The hair on the young man’s chest was thick and dark and ran down in a solid line past his belly before fanning out again at his groin. Jean-Louis’s own cock immediately twitched with interest. Ramón got up and offered the joint to Jean-Louis, who took it with a defeated smile.

“I thought this might help you relax,” Ramón said. He watched Jean-Louis take a deep drag, then leaned in and let Jean-Louis exhale into his open mouth. They kissed, mingling the acrid smoke on their tongues, Ramón’s erection poking at Jean-Louis’s thighs through his trousers. “Let’s get you out of these clothes.”

Jean-Louis stood passive, like a mannequin, as Ramón undressed him: first his vest, then his tie, then his shirt, then his belt, then his trousers and briefs, which lay puddled at his ankles. He had to sit on the bed for Ramón to remove his shoes and socks and pull everything else off. Like a proper manservant, Ramón laid each article of clothing neatly on a chair, put the shoes beneath it. His own clothes were folded just as neatly on the other chair. Jean-Louis was pleased and hoped that Ramón was as considerate in bed as he was out of it. They kissed again, Ramón’s beard scratching against Jean-Louis’s smooth face. It felt good. “I like this,” Jean-Louis whispered, lightly fingering Ramón’s beard. James had grown a short beard once, years ago…he would ask him to grow it back again for him. Yes. That would be nice, to feel it against his face, against his body.

“Lay down on your stomach,” Ramón told him, taking the joint, inhaling slowly before pinching it off and placing the stub in the ashtray on the nightstand.

Jean-Louis complied, just on the edge of feeling buzzed.

“Like this,” he heard Ramón say behind him, then he felt Ramón move a pillow and nudge it under his waist, raising his hips off the bed a little. “That’s better.”

It was a strange sensation—one Jean-Louis wasn’t used to since he and James never rimmed each other—but when he felt Ramón spread his ass cheeks with his hands and then the wet point of his tongue right at his entrance, the slick slide of it as he lapped at his hole, he shivered and moaned out, fisting the duvet in pleasure. As good as Ramón’s eager, muscular tongue, though, was the tickle of his beard against the sensitive skin of his thighs, his buttocks, his testicles. Jean-Louis’s first great sexual experience with a man, a stranger named Paolo on the island of Capri, had started out this way: Jean-Louis spread eagle and face down on a bed, Paolo eating him out like a starving man at a banquet. Up until then, he had never had intercourse with a man except James, had never been handled correctly, never been properly prepared to receive a man into his body, hadn’t known what it was to be made love to with skill. Then there was Paolo, who had done _this_ to him, taught him things that were truly amazing, and although James had never been that kind of consummate lover, Jean-Louis had gone on to share that depth of intimacy with Guy-Manuel. He had done this to Guy-Manuel many times, pleasured him without restraint, worshipped him at his very core, loved him with everything he had. He had never been able to do this with James, nor James with him.

“God…oh god…” Jean-Louis whimpered into the bedspread, the pot mixing with the alcohol and caffeine in his blood, carrying him aloft. His mind was outside of his body; he was nothing more than a bundle of exposed nerves, all sensations focused on Ramón’s tongue circling his entrance, round and round, then pushing in, curling wickedly, his lips sucking wet kisses, his thumbs kneading and stretching him, his beard chafing him ever so deliciously. When he heard the rustle of a condom packet being torn, then the flick of a plastic cap being popped open, he was so ready, so primed he didn’t even want Ramón’s fingers inside him. “Just your cock,” Jean-Louis moaned. “All of you, all at once.”

Ramón grunted out a low rumble of a laugh, turned on by Jean-Louis’s impatience. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“No. Hurt me. Fuck me hard. Do it.” He had seen Ramón’s cock erect, figured he was around six inches, but nice and thick. He could definitely handle it. Even so, when Ramón pushed in to the hilt at one go, just as Jean-Louis had asked, it still burned like wildfire, still made him cry out from the wrenching pain. It was glorious. “Ah! More…again…”

For several minutes there was just the sound of their grunts and groans, the wet slap of skin against skin, the creak of the mattress and the steady thump-thump-thump of the headboard against the wall. Ramón’s breath was hot against Jean-Louis’s neck, the hairs on his chest scratching against Jean-Louis’s back, sweat starting to rise to the surface of their bodies. Then Ramón paused, slumped down onto Jean-Louis, licked at the shell of his ear and muttered hoarsely, “I don’t want to come yet. Turn around. I want to kiss you.” He pulled out and let Jean-Louis roll onto his back. Ramón hooked his arms into the backs of Jean-Louis’s knees and sank his cock into him again, then bent over him in a crouch, biting softly at his lips before sweeping his tongue into his mouth.

 _He’s a good kisser_ , Jean-Louis thought to himself. _He knows what he’s doing, for being so young. Probably fucks a different guest every night_. Then Ramón straightened up—resting back onto his heels, Jean-Louis’s ankles gripped tightly in his hands—and started pounding, snapping his hips hard in a steady rhythm, the headboard leaving dents in the wall now. So good! Jean-Louis could feel that ache building, that ache that spread from deep inside his groin and into his balls as Ramón continued to hammer his prostate. Jean-Louis reached down and tugged steadily on his cock, stroking lightly up and down the shaft. He was very close and he didn’t need much more to push himself over the edge. “I’m coming, I’m coming!” Jean-Louis keened. He arched his back, tightening down on Ramón’s cock, feeling Ramón stutter in his movements, then go rigid as they both climaxed, Jean-Louis onto his own chest, Ramón inside him, both of them lost in ecstasy. What was Jean-Louis thinking? Was he thinking of Guy-Manuel? Was he thinking of James?

And Ramón? What could he possibly be seeing in his mind’s eye? Was it Jean-Louis, a stranger touched twice with rejection by the same beloved? Or was it something else? Something immune to the passage of time? God, perhaps? Or the Devil? Ramón shuddered, and then pressed himself down to Jean-Louis again, kissed him, panted into his mouth, this lost, fair-haired, blue-eyed stranger. “You know,” Ramón murmured against Jean-Louis’s lips, “a truly great wine is had rarely, but even the most common vinegar can be good for the soul.”

Jean-Louis cried then, with sorrow and relief, too. It wasn’t Ramón’s pithy words that did it, it was the way Ramón was looking at him. Was it compassion? Pity? Jean-Louis didn’t want either. He just wanted to forget, to let it all go. So he did, weeping as Ramón kissed his cheeks and held him in a tight embrace, held him until he closed his eyes and the night slipped away at last.

The next morning when Jean-Louis awoke, Ramón was gone from the room, the sun painting the walls in gold. He pressed his nose to the sheets and smelled his own scent, the scent of semen and sweat and, oddly enough, something like roses. He hadn’t noticed the scent on Ramón the night before, but he could smell it on the sheets now, on the pillows. Maybe it was the laundry detergent and not Ramón at all. Or maybe it was his shampoo or soap. Who knows? Jean-Louis didn’t plan on ever seeing Ramón again, Ramón with the eager tongue, but the scent of roses…he pressed his nose into the pillow once more. Yes, he definitely smelled roses and for some reason it made him think of a man from long ago, a man with dusky skin and a tender touch, a man who smelled like a fine cigar. Cigars and roses. He’d remember them both.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter refers to the famous triptych—The Garden of Earthly Delights—by the great Early Renaissance painter, Hieronymus Bosch. In the painting, the titular paradisiacal scene is flanked by a panel depicting Adam and Eve on the left, and the horrors of Hell on the right.
> 
> The last paragraph is a nod to the character, Xas, from author Elizabeth Knox’s novel, The Vintner’s Luck. Xas cultivates roses and that’s all I’ll say here so I don’t spoil the plot of Knox’s book.


	22. To Be or Not to Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean-Louis comes home and must confront some issues.

  

Jean-Louis walked out to greet them in the driveway when James arrived back in Denver with the kids. It had been nearly four weeks since he had last seen them.

“What are you doing here?” James asked, leaping out of the Ford Explorer. “I wasn’t expecting you for another two days.”

“I know,” smiled Jean-Louis. “I took an earlier flight. It turns out my uncle had a sprained wrist, not a broken arm, and my mother was driving me crazy.”

They both laughed, then kissed, and it was like their first kiss—surprising and sweet, and tinged with fear and hope—and like their first kiss, Jean-Louis wept, though he didn’t mean to, not this time, and not all those years ago when James had held him in his arms and wrecked the universe as he knew it, held him close and made him know fear and loathing and everything that he was meant to feel and fight against, made him know there was more to life than what his brother Paul had taught him, made him understand his father wasn’t dead and gone; no, he could find him again—his father and what he had meant to him—find comfort and safety, find that utterly rare love that would envelope him like a warm pair of arms wrapped tight as a shroud around his body. Time felt like an enemy, like something dark and ominous crouching in a corner ready to spring forward and grip him in its jaws and, yet, the urgency colored everything in red: the color of love, of blood, of anger, of everything beating so painfully in his heart and coursing through his veins. It made him weak, afraid, furious, and heated through and through. So Jean-Louis threw his arms around James’s shoulders and pressed his face into his neck, shuddered and sobbed.

“Baby? What?” James pulled away, stared into Jean-Louis’s teary eyes, afraid suddenly.

“Nothing,” Jean-Louis replied. “I’ve missed you. That’s all.”

James clutched Jean-Louis to his chest again, weak with joy. “I’ve missed you, too. I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so glad we’re all home together.”

So they kissed in the driveway, over and over, the kids groaning in disgust as they walked past them and into the house, leaving all their luggage in the SUV.

“Get a room,” Chloe snarked.

 _Kids. What did they know about love?_ James thought. Then he pushed his tongue into Jean-Louis’s mouth once more, arms around his ribcage, squeezing. “You know I love you,” James said. “No matter what. I don’t care. You’re mine.”

Jean-Louis froze. Did James know? Did he know he had been unfaithful yet again? “Yes,” Jean-Louis whispered into James’s ear. “I’m yours.” 

*** 

Dinner was ready for them. Jean-Louis had made salmon poached in dill and lemon, served cold with a salad of mixed greens, haricot verts, and beets, and roasted fingerling potatoes. It was a welcome change from what they had eaten in Traverse City: cherry pies, toast with cherry jam, hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill. Marcel was out of sorts, though. Jean-Louis could tell because the boy barely ate a bite of his favorite meal. After dinner, Jean-Louis asked Marcel to take a walk with him on the gravel trails crisscrossing their property. It was late July and the evenings were pleasant: dry and not too hot once the sun lowered. Fritzel meandered in front of them on the leash, pissing on various rocks, marking his territory after a month away from home. The dog had stayed with Rosa in nearby Aurora, where he had passed his time lording it over the resident black Labrador and getting fatter than ever on beef empanadas.

“How’s grandma?” asked Marcel.

“As pleasant as she always is,” replied Jean-Louis. “She told me I looked like a scarecrow.” That got a laugh out of Marcel. “She is who she is. Oh, that reminds me.” Jean-Louis pulled out his phone. “Here. Take a look. I went through some old photo albums. This is your mother when she was your age.”

Marcel had seen photos of Charlotte when she was in her twenties, an adult, but never in her teens. He was startled by how much his father and mother looked alike: the same eyes, the same mouth and nose, the same honey-gold hair. She was beautiful, like his father. Yes, they were twins, like his own brother and sister. He felt suddenly alone in the world. He had no twin, no one to be his other half. Except… 

“How do you know if you’re in love?” he asked Jean-Louis.

“Ah…” Jean-Louis took a joint out of his cigarette case, lit up, took a toke and offered it to Marcel. “I suppose…if it hurts…if it hurts as much as it brings you joy…” He looked at Marcel, his face so serious as he sucked on the joint before passing it back to him. He thought of Charlotte, Sophie, Guy-Manuel, and all the pain each had brought to him. All the happiness gone too soon. “Do you think you are in love?”

Marcel hesitated, thinking hard, thinking about all the feelings swirling around in his head, in his stomach. “I…I don’t know.” He looked up at Jean-Louis, his mind in turmoil. “I want to, but…Dad, he won’t be happy with me.” 

Jean-Louis raised an eyebrow in surprise. “No? No happier than he is with your sister?” Now they both laughed. “Your Dad…you needn’t worry about him. He’s stubborn, but that doesn’t mean you should back down. Do what you must. He will still love you.”

“Even if…” 

“Even if you’re in love with Kensuke. Hmm? He’s a very nice boy. I like him just fine.”

“Papa!” Marcel turned and wrapped his arms around Jean-Louis’s waist, holding on to him like someone drowning. “Papa!” He burst into tears, sobbing into Jean-Louis’s shirt. “I can’t. Dad will never forgive me!”

“Why should you need forgiveness? You’ve done nothing wrong.” He carded his fingers through Marcel’s hair, soothing him, holding him close. “You don’t choose love, my dear boy. Love chooses you.” 

***

“Marcel’s in love with a boy,” Jean-Louis said. He passed the joint back to Kerrie, watching for her reaction. She took a leisurely toke, not even blinking. They were sitting outside under the shade of a patio umbrella, the green expanse of manicured grass spread out in all directions across the corporate grounds. August was always so pleasant in Denver: hot, dry, and sunny, but never oppressive. “You’re not surprised?”

She shrugged her shoulders, then exhaled and tossed her hair, letting the breeze catch her long blonde tresses and lift them in a dance momentarily. “Life doesn’t surprise me, darling.” They had seen less and less of each other over the past year, their work schedules taking them out of the office for long stretches. This was a rare thing for both of them to be on campus on the same day and share a smoke. “I have news, too.”

“Oh?” Jean-Louis turned to look at her and caught a glint of excitement in her eyes. “Tell me." 

“Steph and I are moving to Palo Alto at the end of September. She’s already found a firm that wants her, and my company is paying me to relocate to their offices there. Almost all my clients now are VCs in Silicon Valley, so it makes more sense than flying me out there every week.”

“And you’re okay with this?” asked Jean-Louis. He wasn’t surprised either.

“Yeah, I am. It'll be a step up for both of us, and...it's time for a change. We're excited.”

“Wow. Then we’ll have to celebrate, yes? Have a party?”

“I don’t want a party. I…I’d like that thing we talked about. I’m not getting any younger, you know.”

Jean-Louis took a long drag, shaking his head. He couldn’t believe that Kerrie could even be serious about such a thing. “You know my condition. I’m most likely sterile and…god knows what I’d pass on…”

“What?” Kerrie put a hand on his cheek and turned his face towards her. “Your beauty? Your brains?”

“My insanity…my cancer…” 

“You know that’s not the way it works. Idiot.”

“You don’t know…”

“What don’t I know about you, Jean-Louis? You’ve told me everything, haven’t you?”

“Yes.” It was true, he had told Kerrie everything, even about Charlotte, especially about Charlotte.

“Then I’m going into this with my eyes wide open, aren’t I? Marcel is fine. He's as lovely as a boy could be, and he's perfectly healthy." She exhaled an impatient breath. "I’m just asking for some good old fashioned unprotected sex, that’s all. If you’re so sterile, as you say, then you have nothing to worry about. You don’t have to worry about passing on your ‘insanity’ or your ‘cancer.’ For Christ’s sake, sometimes I just want to slap you to death.”

“Get in line.” That’s what James would say, thought Jean-Louis. James. God, he would never dare to bring this up with James, this request by Kerrie for a child by him. He felt guilty enough that he had fathered Marcel, innocent Marcel who was most likely doomed to inherit all of his…he couldn’t even put it into words, it was too horrible. “Sometimes I wish I had never been born,” Jean-Louis said aloud. “It would have saved so much trouble.” He looked at the clear blue cloudless sky, his head floating upwards but his heart sinking down, down, down. “Did I ever tell you…my brother told me my father died because of me. Paul said I was greedy. He said I drained all the love and life out of my father…for myself. I sometimes wonder if he’s right. That, perhaps, I _did_ do that. I wonder…if that’s why I’ve been so awful, so cruel to James. Because I want him to punish me. Sometimes….I just wish he would kill me.”

“Oh.” Kerrie put her arms around him, hugged him close. “You poor, deluded soul.”

 


	23. No Man's Land

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marcel comes out to James. Things go south between James and Jean-Louis.

 

Marcel could hear them fighting in the next room, his Dad shouting, “No! No fucking way!”

“What a hypocrite you are!” his Papa shouted back.

“Don’t you call me a hypocrite, you ungrateful piece of shit!” There was the sound of something thudding against the wall, and then James yelling, “This isn’t about _me_. This is about the future and well-being of my son!”

“He’s _my_ son,” Jean-Louis retorted, “and don’t you forget it!” 

“ _Your_ son? When have you _ever_ been his father? When have you ever taught him decency and respect and discipline? When have you ever taught him self-control!”

“Like right now? You are just the _picture_ of self-control, aren’t you James?”

It went on and on, back and forth, like it always did until they wore each other out, hoarse and exhausted. Now he knew how Chloe must have felt, all the disapproval and hostility leveled against every one of her boyfriends. No wonder none of her relationships had ever lasted long. Who could stand this? He wished his sister were home to cover his ears and comfort him, he wished his brother were home to be the brave voice of reason with his Dad, but both she and Benjamin had already left for their first semester at university, Benjamin at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, which gave him the opportunity to play both baseball and hockey, and Chloe at the College of William and Mary in North Adams, Massachusetts, for their well-respected, albeit expensive, liberal arts program. That left Marcel at home and defenseless, sixteen and starting his sophomore year in high school, more in love than ever with Kensuke Nakashima and no longer a virgin. A week before school had started, Kensuke had ridden over on his bike while both James and Jean-Louis were at work. Kensuke had been in Japan the entire summer and he and Marcel were over the moon to be together again, breathing the same air. Their lovemaking had been awkward if not passionate, full of sloppy kisses and clumsy groping, but they had managed it somehow despite the complete lack of finesse, taking turns topping each other before they realized that Marcel’s cock pushing into Kensuke was what felt best for both of them. 

“I love you,” they told each other. And they meant it.

Two weeks later, Marcel came out to James after dinner, not wanting to sneak around anymore or pretend that he and Kensuke were just best friends who happened to spend every waking moment together. His Papa had promised to stand up for them, but Marcel knew it was going to be a bloodbath and he knew that he was the cause of it. Even so, he wouldn’t hide any longer. He was in love and he wanted to be open about it, naively hopeful that everything would work out. He loved his Dad, who had cared for him so resolutely, even if he could be absolutely beastly about things; Marcel had to believe that James would eventually come around and accept Kensuke as one of the family.

“We’re going to get married when we turn eighteen,” Marcel had told James as a way to prove the legitimacy of their devotion. Big mistake. His Dad had turned red with rage, grabbed Jean-Louis by the arm and dragged his Papa upstairs to their room, slamming the door shut. And now the fight was still going strong an hour after it had started. Out of desperation, Marcel texted Chloe: 

came out to dad. he and papa r fighting like mad. what do I do?

In thirty seconds, Chloe replied:

U r so fckd.

***

There followed an uneasy truce, not between Marcel and James, but between James and Jean-Louis. James had in fact apologized to Marcel the next day, assured him that he would love him no matter what, that he just needed a little time to absorb the reality of the situation. 

“You caught me by surprise,” James told him. “I didn’t think…” And then James had wept, clutching Marcel against his chest, telling him how sorry he was that he had lost his temper. “Do you forgive me?”

“Dad…” Marcel had cried in James’s arms, “Dad…” he cried with relief, with so much love for the man who was his father in every way except one.

Jean-Louis, though, wasn’t so quick to forgive. He was angry, upset, utterly betrayed by James’s reaction. That James would begrudge Marcel such an innocent infatuation when in the past he had pursued Jean-Louis like a wild animal, treated him with the manners of an uncivilized caveman, only to believe he was blameless in his own actions. He would never forget the way that James had taken him the first time—without any care or consideration for his virginity, without any thought for his feelings, for his fear and pain. It had been awful, so fucking awful, but he had given James what he wanted regardless, given him smug satisfaction and then let him take what he desired time and again afterwards. He had never said no to him, that much was true, but why? Why didn’t he ever say no? Why did he let James wreck him in the worst way? Marcel and James had reconciled quickly, and that was a good thing, but Jean-Louis was left with a bitter taste in his mouth. The night after the fight, he dreamt of his sister, and in that dream Charlotte was chastising him for eating too much cake. He was nauseated and poised over the toilet, retching and heaving in agony. 

“I told you,” Charlotte was saying, holding his hair back from his face so as not to get soiled with vomit, “but you never listen.”

When he awoke in a sweat, the only thought in his mind was, “When was that?” In the haze of half-consciousness, he grasped for a handhold into the past, searching for Charlotte, wanting desperately to turn around and see her once again. How old would she be? Five? Ten? Thirteen? Twenty-three? “Our child…our son…” He was no longer dreaming and, yet, Charlotte was right beside him, her voice in his ear like a song, like the most beautiful song, singing to him, “It’s time to go, little brother."

The dream had been like an omen telling him which way his luck was heading, and then, like a message delivered by the ancient oracle at Delphi sealing his fate like an insect in amber, he received a text from Kerrie:

I'm pregnant again

and then five months later:

it’s another girl

***

That year James’s parents flew out to Denver for Christmas. His father Peter was walking with difficulty, his knees giving him grief even after the surgeries, the twenty extra pounds gained not helping one bit, and it would likely be the last time they would celebrate the holiday in Colorado together. The twins were home after their first semester in college and Jean-Louis was happier than he had been in months to see them and have some outlet for his affection besides Marcel. They were still barely talking—he and James—Jean-Louis refusing to let go of his indignation, though they were fucking as much as usual. _Fine_ , James thought to himself. _If this is the way it’s gotta be, then so be it_. The rougher he was with Jean-Louis, the more determined James was to win this fight, Jean-Louis’s silent acquiescence was both a slap in the face and an incentive to slap him right back. Only the slaps had escalated to bruises inflicted in angry frustration and Jean-Louis, despite the violence, had only provoked James with increasingly vicious enthusiasm.

“Go ahead,” Jean-Louis had snarled at him one night. “I fucking _hate_ you.”

And James had choked him to within an inch of his life, his hands around Jean-Louis’s throat as they both gave themselves over to the most wrenching orgasms. Afterwards, they had kissed and sobbed into each other, neither one uttering a word of apology. They had fallen apart, curled up on opposite sides of the bed, separated by a desert of furious resentment as vast as the Sahara. By Christmas, they had mastered the art of stone cold civility for the sake of Marcel’s sanity, each of them pouring all their love into the boy, leaving none for the other. Marcel had accepted it without complaint. What else could he do? He wouldn’t give up Kensuke, nor would he tell his parents to stop this asinine war over him for fear that he would have to compromise his own desires in order to broker a peace. All Marcel wanted to do was hang on until Christmas when Benjamin and Chloe would be home to fix it all for him, when his grandparents would be there to offer protection. It couldn’t come soon enough.

Laura, James’s mother, knew right away that things had gone to shit. She didn’t reproach her son, though; she had a heart-to-heart with Jean-Louis instead at the kitchen sink as they cleaned up after a splendid dinner of duck with a tart cherry sauce. She loved her son, but knew that he was as stubborn as a mule. Jean-Louis was equally stubborn, but he was susceptible to a certain kind of woman and she knew it, having met Jean-Louis’s sister, the mother of her son’s children, and guessed Jean-Louis’s weakness. Laura was in her mid-sixties now, but she had lost none of her girl-next-door looks, her blonde hair faded to a light gold, her figure still firm and shapely. She knew she could charm Jean-Louis into telling her the truth, not that he had ever lied to her. In some ways, she felt more empathy for Jean-Louis than for her own son. Jean-Louis was thoughtful, sensitive, easily broken though he rarely expressed any displeasure in front of her. Only once had he ever voiced his dissatisfaction with James to her, and she could only assume that it had been the tip of the iceberg. What lay beneath it all? How many miles of despair lay hidden?

“I’m going to be a father again,” Jean-Louis told her. “James doesn’t know.” 

She gaped in shock, then cast a furtive glance into the living room where James was arm wrestling with Benjamin. “Is this something…did you plan on this?” 

“Yes. No. I mean, she wanted a child...children. She wanted me to be the father. That’s all. She’s a friend of mine.” They had slept together the fall of last year before Kerrie had moved to California with Stephanie. To their surprise, it resulted in a daughter born in early May. They named the girl Harper Lee. Three months later, he went to the fertility clinic in Englewood at Kerrie's request and masturbated into a plastic cup, providing samples over the course of a week, his sperm then "washed" and frozen and shipped via Fedex in a small tank of liquid nitrogen. And now baby girl number two was on the way, due in May once more. Jean-Louis stopped scrubbing the roasting pan and turned to Laura, looked into her heartbroken face. “I want to leave him,” he told her. “I’ve had it. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Oh.” What about the kids? What about James? What about all the years you’ve put into this? She wanted to ask so many questions, but they all died in her constricted throat. “Do you still love him?” she asked instead.

“Yes,” Jean-Louis replied, “but right now, I despise him so much more.”

 


	24. New Years, New Scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New Year’s is celebrated. Shit happens.

His older brothers—Paul and Ernst—had done everything right by their mother Catherine. They had married nice French girls, fathered legitimate French children, stayed in France where all respectable French people wouldn’t think of leaving. Jean-Louis hadn’t done any of those things. Instead, he had gone to America as a teenager and done everything a decent French boy shouldn’t do. He had allowed an American—a man, no less—to take his “virginity” in the worst way and then, years later, married the disgusting beast. He had fucked his own sister and produced a son borne of incest. Well, at least Marcel was completely _French_. And now…Jean-Louis didn’t know which way to turn. James would kill him if he knew about the girls. The _girls_. His daughters: one seven months old, another due in five months. The walls were closing in and all he could think about was escape. There was a catch, though. He couldn’t abandon Marcel. He wasn’t afraid for the boy’s safety; he knew James would never hurt Marcel. But he had married James in order to be with Marcel, to see the boy grow up and know his own father, to give Marcel all the love that he had lost himself when his own father had died too soon, to prove to his sister that she hadn’t sacrificed her own life for nothing. He had tried his best, but he was failing so badly. And now, Jean-Louis could hardly stand to think.

The holidays with all the children and James’s parents staying with them…it was good. It was a respite from having to be alone with James. With all the distractions—the sheer mania of shopping and cooking and entertaining—there was little time spent alone with James, little time to brood or argue or contemplate reality and plenty of opportunity to drink too much, get high too much. Thank the fuck god for alcohol and pot! Every minute spent outside of work was alleviated with drink and drugs and Jean-Louis was determined to take advantage of the excuse to celebrate the birth of Christ and American consumerism with his favorite indulgences. If not for that, if not for Marcel, he may have slit his own wrists. Or run far, far away. 

His in-laws, Laura and Peter, left a week after the New Year, and the days were spent back at the office where Jean-Louis could while away the hours with meetings and emails and paperwork. Then, Benjamin and Chloe left to go back to college right before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Jean-Louis cut back on travel so he could spend more time home with Marcel. James was working longer hours at the bar and he wanted to be there for Marcel. His own father Charles had been dead for three years by the time Jean-Louis was sixteen, as Marcel was now. It was a confusing time, a time when feelings ran hot and high, when everything meant _forever_. He didn’t want Marcel to navigate these waters alone like he had done and made so many mistakes out of ignorance.

“Ask me anything,” he told Marcel. “I won’t be angry. I promise.”

The funny thing was, Marcel never came to him and asked him anything, never said, “Papa, tell me this.” After a while, Jean-Louis began to wonder if Marcel didn’t trust him. And, if Marcel didn’t trust him, had he given him reason for this distrust?

“You know you can come to me if you need anything,” Jean-Louis said again. “You don’t need to be shy.” 

“Je sais, Papa,” Marcel would reply. _I know_. Then Marcel would smile and kiss Jean-Louis’s cheeks, but he never asked him anything. 

***

He didn’t mean to punch Jean-Louis in the face. James had _meant_ to punch the wall instead but, somehow, his fist had missed by a few inches and, well, there it was: an innocent mistake. He hadn’t meant to do the other thing that had followed afterwards either, but that wasn’t so innocent a mistake, not by a longshot.

Christmas had gone by without a hitch—a perfectly good holiday enjoyed with just family— but New Year’s Eve had been celebrated with a huge party at the house and too many drinks. James’s parents hadn’t left for Michigan yet, and the kids were all spending the night at the houses of friends, so that meant it was prime time for no-holds-barred adult shenanigans. Some of James’s old football pals were in Denver, including his best bro Dontrell Wainright, who was now divorced from wife Number Three and eager to hook up with someone else. James had invited all the eligible women he knew to the house, both married and single, and Donnie was having a grand old time chatting them up, charming them with his slick pick-up lines and deep baritone voice. That Donnie. Always the consummate _player_. There was just one problem, a problem that James had not anticipated. Donnie had flown into Denver with a mutual acquaintance, a man that had taken Donnie’s place on the Broncos when Donnie had been traded to the Eagles during James’s pro playing days. And that man was Elijah Czscekiczi, the wide receiver who had replaced Donnie on the Broncos when Donnie had left for Philadelphia. It was a long time ago, but James would never forget how much he despised Elijah. The rookie had been magnificent on the gridiron, as if that weren’t bad enough. Then Elijah had hit on Jean-Louis at James’s thirty-first birthday party, as if Jean-Louis had been free for the taking. Elijah had gone on to play two more years for the Broncos before joining Donnie on the Eagles and, as if to rub salt into the wound, Donnie and Elijah had become fucking _friends_ , even after retiring from the NFL.

“Look, man,” Donnie had said on the phone, “he’s one of us. Give him a break.”

Yeah, James would give Elijah a break alright. He’d give him as many breaks as it took if he so much as made a move on his boy. He’d break each and every bone in Elijah’s body. They—Donnie and Elijah—had shown up at the house at midnight, both of them already drunk after hitting a few bars in town—and Elijah had made a beeline for Jean-Louis. Donnie had gripped James in a bear hug, pounding his back and and then punching him in the shoulder, and for the next few hours, James was taken back to his younger days, when his whole world had revolved around practice, drills, weight training, and laying it all out on the field of play on game day. The glory days. Isn’t that what they called it? Those days had been oh so beautiful, so uncomplicated, so simple and satisfying. Winning had been everything, and it had been enough. But after Jean-Louis, things were no longer simple, and winning was a thing that had eluded him because the only objective he wanted to meet was making Jean-Louis _his_. In some ways, it had proven to be more difficult than winning the Super Bowl. James had never won the Super Bowl, but he had won Jean-Louis, to some extent. He had convinced Jean-Louis to marry him, and that was something way better than winning the Super Bowl. To win the Super Bowl was something that was put in the record books, though. It was something that would stand the test of time; it was etched in stone, unchangeable. Keeping Jean-Louis…if only that was something so certain!

By the end of the night, James was completely shitfaced. Jean-Louis was even more bombed and, in a fit of alcohol-induced spite, told him that he and Kerrie had spawned children behind his back. At first, James had laughed, thinking that Jean-Louis was just trying to push his buttons as they made a lame attempt to clean up the living room, but then Jean-Louis showed him the text that Kerrie had sent him and James had dragged Jean-Louis into their bedroom to continue the discussion.

“This is a joke, right?” James slurred, his face half an inch from Jean-Louis’s. “Just tell me you’re playing games with me.”

“No games,” Jean-Louis smiled. “Did you really think I’d ever—” 

And that’s when he’d punched Jean-Louis in the face. Yes. He’d meant to punch the wall, but Jean-Louis was too drunk to turn away and James’s fist landed squarely on his left cheekbone instead of the wall behind him. The pain from his bruised knuckles didn’t even register until the next day, but Jean-Louis was nowhere to be seen by then. James remembered saying, “I’m sorry, baby. Didn’t mean to hit you.” He remembered Jean-Louis slumped on the floor. He remembered Jean-Louis laughing and saying, “He still wants me. Elijah. He still wants me.” Those words lit a fire under James and, in his drunken rage, the past intersected with the present and exploded like a bomb in his brain. Everything in between, all the years in between, were erased in a gigantic fireball of fury and James acted on an almost primordial instinct: to take, to conquer, to keep what was his. It was bad enough that Jean-Louis had cheated, had purposefully bred more children behind his back without even asking for his permission, but he had then proceeded to rub his face into the pile of shit that was Elijah Czscekiczi, a man who was more talented and skillful than James had ever been as a pro player.

His parents were in the guest house, the kids were sleeping over at the houses of friends, so James felt no hesitation in crossing the line. “I’m going to make you sorry.” That’s what he said as he picked Jean-Louis off the floor and tossed him in the direction of the bed. He punched him a few more times in the ribs just to be mean. He was so fucking pissed off, he couldn’t help himself. It felt so good to slap him around, tear off his clothes, fuck into him with no mercy, no lube, just saliva on his cock. He wanted to hurt him, make him bleed, and when he heard Jean-Louis crying against the mattress, begging him to stop, he finally let himself cum. “Are you sorry now?” James grunted into Jean-Louis’s ear. “Will you be a good boy now?”

The next morning, Jean-Louis was gone. There was no sign of him except the blood on the sheets and a note on the dresser: 

_I was wrong, but I never thought you’d do that to me again._

So James told the kids a half-truth over breakfast, that they had had an argument and that they would be taking some time off from each other. “Nothing to worry about,” James muttered sheepishly. “Nothing we can’t work out.”

The kids didn’t question it. Their Papa had left before and come back, but James’s mother knew better, especially when she found James drunk after breakfast when the kids were at the movies with Peter. 

“So, you know?” Laura eyed the bottle of Maker’s Mark and poured herself a shot in James’s empty glass. “He told you?”

James shot his mother a red-eyed glance, then slumped forward on the living room sofa, rubbing both hands across his face. “I hit him, Mom. I raped him.” He pressed his palms into his eyes and then covered his ears when he heard his mother stifle a cry. “It’s not the first time.”

“You have to get help,” Laura said. “Both of you. If you want me to talk to him, I’ll talk to him, but you both need to fix this.” This was so wrong. She knew they loved each other, each in their own way, but this was just too fucked up. “What kind of example are you…the kids see everything, you know that, don’t you? Don’t do this to them. Whatever it is that you have to fix, just fix it!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize that this fic is rather skeletal in terms of exposition. At some point, when I have more time, I may go back and edit this story, fill in where things are paper thin, flesh out certain situations, etc., but right now, I'd rather post chapters as I can write them rather than do nothing at all with it. I'm not a perfectionist, which is pretty obvious, and I don't like to overthink things. I don't know if this is good or bad, but it is what it is.


	25. I Remember It Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James and Jean-Louis talk.

There was nothing like the sober light of day to put things into perspective. The antics of New Year’s Eve were shrouded in a drunken fog of questionable memories. What was real and what was imagined? The mind can play tricks with memory under duress, and Jean-Louis wasn’t clear on what had actually happened. What he _did_ know was that he was in a hotel room in Denver, the same hotel he had stayed at when he had come back to the States to plead with James. _I want my son_.

A thin ribbon of sunlight glowed gold against the edge of the blackout curtains, telling him that it was no longer nighttime. He rolled off the bed and stubbed his toe on the one piece of luggage he must have dropped on the floor when he first arrived. “Merde!” His head was throbbing like mad, a hammer pounding against the insides of his skull as he slowly felt his way along the wall and into the bathroom for a drink of water. What was he doing here? The water felt good hitting his parched tongue and throat and he gulped down one glass, then another before he realized he hadn’t even turned on the light switch. The splitting headache made it hard to stand upright, so he sat on the toilet and peed like a girl would. He couldn’t believe he actually had his usual morning erection in his sorry condition, but he still had the wherewithal to hold his cock down with one hand so he wouldn’t piss all over himself. It took forever to urinate it seemed, and as he sat listening to the soft trickle against the side of the toilet bowl, the ache in his body bloomed even as the pressure in his bladder ebbed. Why did his face feel raw and swollen? He got up, flushed, and squinted into the mirror over the sink. Even in the dark, he knew something was wrong. With a groan, he flicked on the light switch and groaned even louder. His left eye was scarlet with burst blood vessels, his left cheek an attractive rainbow of colors: green, purple, yellow, red. How could he go back to the office in another day looking like fresh roadkill? Then he remembered his trusty go-to explanation: _I had a ski accident_. Yeah. That’s what he’d say. This was Denver and people often returned from a holiday or vacation battered and bruised on the slopes after faceplanting into an icy snowbank. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d told such a lie.

Though his hands were shaking, he managed to unwrap the little bar of soap and wash his face. His shoulders were sore and his wrists purpled from when James had held his arms behind his back as he fucked into him like an animal; it was all coming back. The bruises on his ribs…he remembered that too now, James treating him like the punching bag down in the basement gym. What would he tell the kids? How could he go home and let his in-laws see him like this? Would anyone believe him if he said he was off on some emergency business trip? How ludicrous! No. No, he’d let James make the excuses. Yes. He would call him and tell him to say whatever the fuck he had to say to spare him this humiliation. James owed him that much at the least.

He staggered back into the main room and called room service, ordered black coffee and toast. He unzipped his luggage and looked inside. There were several dress shirts and slacks and ties, some underwear and socks—around a week’s worth of clothing—and his passport. Not bad. He looked at the clothes scattered on the floor: a pair of trousers and a cashmere sweater. He must have thrown on those clothes when he had left the house along with the items he had stuffed into his luggage. He rummaged through the pockets of his trousers and found his wallet. The car keys were in his jacket, which was lying on top of a chair. He was naked, though, so he opened the closet and found the white terry bathrobe emblazoned with the letters BPH&S for Brown Plaza Hotel and Spa and wrapped it around his aching body. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and waited.

He had behaved like a fool the night before, the pot and alcohol loosening his frustration, dampening fear and dumping good sense into the trash. He had been so very stupid. It had been years since he last saw Elijah, and that last time had resulted in a vicious argument with James. It was no different this time. Elijah was still Elijah: loud-mouthed, overly confident, show-boating like nobody’s business. In other words, he was just like James.

“Well I’ll be fucked,” Elijah had told him, cornering Jean-Louis by the fireplace in the living room under the stuffed moosehead. “I never thought I’d ever see you again. And here you are, still with that douchebag Miller?” Elijah had caressed Jean-Louis’s cheek, bent close and whispered with a wolfish grin, “You could have done so much better, sweetheart. It’s not too late, you know. There’s plenty of me to go around.”

Jean-Louis had been rather impressed. Elijah didn’t look all that much different after some fifteen plus years. Aside from a slightly receding hairline, Elijah was still firm and fit. He hadn’t let himself go soft like some other former pro athletes. And he was as aggressive as ever, standing far too closely and flirting without shame. Jean-Louis didn’t know anything about Elijah other than the fact that he had six brothers and had replaced Dontrell on the Broncos and that James couldn’t abide the man out of what could only be rabid jealousy. He felt no real attraction to Elijah but Jean-Louis was drunk and high and loving the attention. He’d had attention all his life, but ever since the marriage he had felt like a man forced to starve himself. Tonight, he wanted to eat it up, the attention from someone who wasn’t James, the illicit flirtation, the naughtiness. He wanted to be free once more. When the guests had all left, including Elijah who had gone with Dontrell to a club, and his in-laws had retired to the guest house, it was just him and James cleaning up the mess in the house. He wasn’t tired; in fact, he was still buzzed and talkative and when James had called Dontrell irresponsible for fathering illegitimate children all across the country, Jean-Louis had taken Donnie’s side, saying, “Maybe those women wanted him. Maybe they didn’t mind having his kids. Maybe he was giving them what _they_ wanted.” 

James had laughed dismissively. “No, baby. You get a girl pregnant, you marry her. I would have married your slut of a sister, but she was too fucking high and mighty to say yes.” Jean-Louis had shot James the most hateful glare, but James was as drunk as Jean-Louis and wasn’t going to have any of _that_. With no one in the room to deflect the hostility that had grown between them, James wasn’t holding back his own resentment. “Don’t act all insulted with me. All I can say is: thank the fuck god she was the only woman _you_  ever knocked up. No woman in her right mind would have kids with a fucked up lunatic like you.”

Even as bombed as he was, the words had cut Jean-Louis to the bone. Is this what James really thought of him? He knew he wasn’t a good father, but he had tried his best. He had tried to be there for Marcel, for Benjamin and Chloe. He had told Kerrie not to send him pictures of their daughter because he respected the fact that Kerrie was with Stephanie and not with him. He had offered child support, but she and Stephanie had both refused. Harper Lee…he would love her if he saw her, he would love her if Kerrie wanted him to be in her life, but they had all decided it was best to keep it separate, keep it simple, uncomplicated, so he hadn’t insisted even though he had wanted to be there like he had been when Charlotte had given birth to her first child Étienne, and later with Marcel. He had been there. He wanted to do the right thing even if he failed time and again in James’s eyes. So he had shown him Kerrie’s text out of self-defense, out of indignation and fury. He was good for some things. He had made Kerrie happy, given her what she wanted even if James would never approve. When James dragged him upstairs and punched him in the face, it wasn’t much of a surprise. And when he took him so brutally, Jean-Louis expected to die. It would have been a mercy. 

There was a knock on the door. Room service. He stood aside so the woman could push the cart into the room and set the tray on the table by the window. When he slipped a generous tip into her hand, she thanked him profusely in Spanish. Then he searched in his coat pocket for his phone, took a deep breath, and sat down at the table. It was already twelve-thirty in the afternoon! After two cups of coffee and a piece of toast, he called James, who sounded exhausted and contrite.

“I already told them you wouldn’t be home,” James said. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Jean-Louis replied. Then he broke down in tears. “You did a number on my face, you bastard. I have to go into work tomorrow looking like…” He stopped short. He hadn’t looked all that much different after the car accident but that was an incident he didn’t want to rehash. He didn’t want to rehash the other thing either. Instead, he wiped his face gingerly with the napkin and said, “I’m sorry about Kerrie. It’s not what you think it is. She wanted me to—”

“Why didn’t you just _ask_ me?” James interrupted. 

He sounded so hurt and betrayed, it only put Jean-Louis on the defensive. “As if you would have said yes!”

“Fine,” James snapped back. “I wouldn’t have said yes, but you didn’t have the right to do that!”

“The right? I’m not your property, James. You don’t own me!”

“Yes I fucking do! I own you as much as you own me. That’s what being married means you idiot. We don’t just do whatever we fucking please. We ask. We discuss things, we—”

“Did you _discuss_ things with me last night? Is that what you call it?” Jean-Louis accused, angrily pacing the room now and stubbing his toe on the piece of luggage on the floor once more. He kicked it aside and then sat back down at the table, his headache spiking with a vengeance.

When James spoke next, his voice was low and broken. “Baby…that wasn’t me. I don’t know who that was but…it wasn’t me. That fucker Elijah…you didn’t let him touch you, did you?”

“Of course not,” Jean-Louis said. “He’s not my type.” _Not my type_. There wasn’t much to distinguish between the two men in both physical stature and personality and Jean-Louis wondered if this fact was lost on James. Besides, one domineering man was more than enough. He heard James sigh over the phone. It sounded like relief, so he ventured, “When your parents leave, I think I’ll stay in the guest house. Unless you want me to move out altogether?”

“No. No! Baby…you don’t have to stay in the guest house. I mean…shit…what’s the point?”

“Yes, James, what’s the point?” And then, without thought, the words came out. His head hurt so badly, his body, too; there was nothing to stand in the way of an old longing that had hidden in the recesses of his psyche like an animal deep in a cave. “I’ve tried so hard to make you happy. I wanted you to love me. It was never good enough, was it?” In that moment, he felt James’s fists pummeling him—the acute, thudding pain of it—each punch landed with passion, with righteous judgment. It had hurt, those hands on him working so diligently to set him on the right path. James loved him, didn’t he? He closed his eyes and let his body remember it all, let himself fall into a deep stupor where pain was mixed with love, where grey eyes turned hazel, where English slipped into French. Jean-Louis shut off his phone, James’s voice interrupted mid-sentence, and laid back down on the bed. He was so very tired.

 

 


	26. The Sun Also Rises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steps are taken towards reconciliation.

 

The ice machine was located near the stairwell one floor above Jean-Louis’s room. He held the bucket with its plastic liner bag under the dispenser and pressed the button. The machine rattled to life, spitting out an avalanche of ice cubes, half of which landed on the floor, the water stains on the carpet proof that others had also been caught off-guard. “Ah, fuck me!” After years of living with James, Jean-Louis had slowly adopted the man’s habits of speech. Right now, it was just another cause for dismay as he stooped down to collect the errant cubes and throw them into the machine’s too-narrow catch-tray.

The stairwell door swung open violently with a loud whine from the hinges. “Gotcha, too, eh?” came a booming voice.

Jean-Louis craned his neck over his shoulder and froze for a second, then jerked his head back down, still hunched over, ice cubes at his feet. What was _he_ doing here?

“Jean-Louis? What are _you_ doing here?” Elijah crouched down next to him and shook him by the shoulder. “Hey, what happened to your face?” He dropped the large carry-out bag from Panera and made a grab for Jean-Louis’s chin, only to have his hand batted away.

“Never mind why I’m here.” Jean-Louis stood up and kicked the rest of the ice under the machine, picked up his ice bucket and headed back towards the stairwell but Elijah blocked his path. 

“Wait a minute.” Elijah held him by both arms and stared down at him, took a good look. “Are you hungry? I got a bunch of sandwiches. Why don’t you come to my room and we can have lunch together? I’m on this floor.”

God, just his luck. All he wanted was some ice to bring down the swelling around his eye and now he’d have to eat sandwiches with Elijah and who knows what else. Truth was, it was almost four-thirty and he had slept again after talking to James, woken up, had a long cry in the tub and decided he needed to do something about the condition of his left cheek. What were the chances of crossing paths with Elijah again? “Is Donnie with you?” Jean-Louis asked as he was pulled down the hallway.

“Nah, Donnie flew out this morning. My plane doesn’t leave until 11:50 tonight. I got some time to kill.” 

Elijah’s room was a mess, empty bottles and clothes strewn willy-nilly and what looked like several pairs of women’s thongs scattered on the floor near one of the beds. No surprise there. Lots of guys swung both ways, especially if partners of either sex were readily available.

“Do you have any PKs?” asked Jean-Louis. Most athletes maintained ties with their trainers, even after retirement, because that’s just how it was. A guy like Elijah— who had always played hard and sustained plenty of damage, and who had no qualms about drinking and drugging—would have the good stuff. James had been a masochist when it came to pain; he never went further than self-medicating with booze, and even with the drinking, it had been an escape from the emotional rather than the physical agony.

“What’s your poison?” Elijah grinned. “I got Oxy, Percocet, ‘ludes if you want to knock back some vodka and chill out.” He opened his mini fridge and pulled out some little bottles of Ketel One. “I got weed, of course, but I’m sure you have your own stash.”

“Oxy is good. I’ll have a sandwich, too, if you can spare one. And the vodka.” Jean-Louis went into the bathroom and grabbed a hand towel, wrapped it around his bag of ice cubes and sat himself on the sofa in the front room. He didn’t want to be anywhere near the beds. The television was on and tuned to ESPN. He wondered what the kids were doing. He’d have to call them tonight and tell them…tell them he loved them, that he was sorry, that everything would be alright. This one was on him. He should have kept his mouth shut; if he had, then he wouldn’t be holding a towel full of ice to his cheek and eating lunch with Elijah, the last person he wanted to see. A pill was set on the coffee table in front of him along with several mini bottles of vodka, and a roast beef sandwich. 

“Cheers,” Elijah chuckled, twisting the caps off of six mini bottles of whiskey and pouring them into a water glass. "Hair of the dog, right?" He gulped down half the glass and nodded with approval, his large brown eyes twinkling. “I gotta hand it to you, Jean-Louis. That’s an impressive shiner. I hope it has my name written all over it.”

Christ. As if dealing with James weren’t bad enough. “I’m glad you’re pleased,” Jean-Louis muttered. He took a bite of his sandwich and chewed carefully, his jaw still sore. He didn’t know whom he hated the most: James, Elijah, or himself. “It’s nice to know you take pride in being a homewrecker.”

“Oh, c’mon, you know that’s not what I mean. Miller…the guy’s an asshole. You don’t have to stay with a douchebag like him.”

“No?” Jean-Louis queried. “Should I be with a douchebag like you instead?”

“Hey, I’m not the one who gave you a black-eye. Don’t jump down _my_ throat. Besides…you wear it well.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jean-Louis threw down his sandwich and opened the vodka, downed the pill with an angry swallow. Elijah’s smirk made him want to punch his lights out.

Elijah merely laughed. “All I’m saying is, even with the black-eye, you’re still a beauty. A face like yours...it makes a man want to break you."

“You’re disgusting,” replied Jean-Louis. He drank another bottle of vodka and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “We’re all disgusting.” He picked up the remainder of his sandwich and the ice bucket and stood up. “I’m going to finish this in my room. Thanks for the Oxy. I need to call my kids.”

“Yeah, well, you know where to find me if you get lonely.”

He was shaking when he closed the door behind him, his stomach in knots. All he wanted to do was to go home, sleep in his own bed, feel the warmth and bulk of James next to him, tell him he had done the right thing for once. But he couldn’t, not right now, not with his face a mess. He couldn’t let the children or his in-laws see him like this. Whatever insanity transpired between him and James, well, it had to stay just between them. It was no one else’s concern.

***

He didn’t ask Jean-Louis to come home right away. He was too afraid to see what he had done to him. How badly had he ruined his face? If only Jean-Louis hadn’t brought up Elijah that night, slapped him in the face with that motherfucker…why couldn’t Jean-Louis understand that he had his pride to protect? And as far as Kerrie was concerned…Christ! James didn’t even want to think about _that_. So they spoke briefly every day over the course of a week—circling around the truth with awkward pauses, interruptions, silences—wary and careful, bitter but not wanting to wound the other any more than they had already done. What James _wanted_ to say was, “Forgive me. Come home,” but that would have been asking too much; even _he_ knew that. So he told Jean-Louis instead, “I’ve got it covered. Don't worry about the kids. They love you, you know that, don’t you? Baby…I love you, too. Mom will never let me hear the end of it if we don’t work this out. Have a little mercy.”

On the drive to the airport at the end of the week, James tried to make light of this most recent marital discord, explaining to his parents, “You know how it is, right Dad? You spent weeks sleeping in the garage when me and Ted were little.”

“That’s not the same!” Laura snapped. “That’s not even _remotely_ the same and you know it. Your father and I…Jesus Christ…”

“Honey, take it easy,” Peter soothed, completely oblivious to what had actually happened between James and Jean-Louis on New Year’s Eve. Laura never told him the details of their own son’s appalling acts, but even if she had, her husband was the type to overlook it, brush it off with a “boys will be boys” attitude. As far as Peter was concerned, a little roughness wasn’t a bad trait in a man. Violence towards a woman was a big no-no, but aggression between men was a given, something he chalked up to testosterone or evolution or whatever. His own father had never coddled him, nor did he coddle his own sons, so if James and Jean-Louis got into fights that involved fists, so be it. It was what men did: they solved problems through physical means. The whole “let’s chitchat our way through this” was women’s territory.

“I mean it, James,” Laura continued. She poked her head between the two front headrests and squeezed James’s shoulder. “I want you both to get some counseling. Promise me.”

“Oh, for crying out loud!” groaned Peter. “This isn’t the fucking Oprah Winfrey Show! Honey, please, just let them work it out on their own. Every couple has fights. Look at us. We argue all the time.”

“No we _don’t_ ,” Laura was quick to protest. “Since _when_ do we ever argue?” 

“How about right now?” asked Peter.

She ignored him and went on insisting, pounding James’s shoulder now, “Promise me, James.”

“Mom, jeez, I’m trying to drive here! Do you want to get into an accident?”

“Accident, schmaccident,” she muttered, sitting back in her seat with an angry huff. “That’s your excuse for everything.”

“Fuck.” God, he loved his mother, even if she was kicking his ass or making him eat his own bullshit. She never let him get away with anything and he was grateful. If it weren’t for her, Jean-Louis would have never come to him when he had suffered his career-ending injury on the field, he would have never had that time with him, the very first time they had ever lived together, those few precious months before Jean-Louis’s illness had come to light and he was without him once again. “Okay, Mom, I promise.” James caught her look of relief in the rearview mirror. “We’ll get help.”

***

When he arrived back home after seeing his parents off at the airport, he saw Jean-Louis’s old BMW parked in the garage and then, when he opened the front door to the house, he heard Jean-Louis in the kitchen making Sunday dinner, the sounds of conversation as the kids set the table and chatted back and forth with carefree joy. James could smell something savory roasting. It turned out to be a filet wrapped in puff pastry baked with red potatoes and carrots and a creamed spinach, one of James’s favorite meals. He paused as he hung up his coat in the hallway closet, overcome with remorse and happiness. He was back, his Jean-Louis, the love of his life. “Get it together,” James told himself. “Be a man.”

He walked into the kitchen and acted as if nothing was wrong, as if Jean-Louis hadn’t stayed at a hotel for a week after James had given him a black eye and done things even more reprehensible. They all knew how the game was played and how to pretend that everything was just as it should be. If they all played their part, then life would return to normal.

“Hey,” James said, putting his arms around Jean-Louis as he stood at the stove stirring a small saucepot of béarnaise. James kissed him tenderly on the cheek, the scent of lemons and sunshine filling his nostrils as he pressed his face into the back of Jean-Louis’s head. “Baby…I’ll do better. I promise.”

Jean-Louis turned around and faced him, his arms thrown over James’s shoulders. The bruise on his left cheek was dark, a purple so deep it looked black, but he was unmarred otherwise, the parts of him that showed. His eyes were just a little teary, glistening beneath the task lights of the kitchen, his lips curved into a shy smile. “I hope you’re hungry.”

“I’m always hungry,” James said. He leaned down and kissed him and all James could think was that Jean-Louis’s lips were as soft as the petals of a rose. He licked into his wet mouth, curled his tongue around Jean-Louis’s, clutched him tightly to his chest, his hands feeling along the muscles of Jean-Louis’s back, then wrapping around his ribs, wanting to just hold on to him and never let go. When they finally broke apart, James murmured against Jean-Louis’s ear, “I’m so happy you’re back.”

That night they made love, loud and long, as much for the kids as for themselves. It was a way of announcing that everything was back to normal, an assurance that the bump in the road had been smoothed over. Whatever lies they told themselves, _this_ was no lie; to fuck each other senseless was as close to honesty as they could ever get.

“James…daddy…right there…don’t stop…” Jean-Louis opened his eyes and saw James staring back at him, his grey eyes so serious, his jaw clenched tightly. “Do you still love me?” asked Jean-Louis as he pulled James’s hips closer, took him all the way inside himself.

“I love you,” James rasped. “I do, baby.” He didn’t ask Jean-Louis if he loved him back. Instead, James said, “Come for me. Say you want me. Let me hear you. Let me see it.”

It was so easy to give James what he wanted when all it took was to surrender his body. He wished there was nothing more to give than this—his body, his voice calling out his name, his cum painting both of them—but there _was_ more to give, so much more that was still locked away, doors that needed to be opened before it was all too late.

 


	27. Breaking Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Efforts to reconcile fall short. Jean-Louis makes a decision.

James was never one to overthink things. In fact, his approach to life was to just live it, always moving forward, like a shark cutting a path through the ocean. A shark didn’t waste its energy pondering over questions that couldn’t be answered or solving problems that couldn’t be fixed. He was no Einstein, as Jean-Louis had told him more than once, but he _was_ a man on a mission, a man with a goal and, like all men with finely tuned alpha instincts, he was stubbornly relentless in the pursuit of his prey. When Andy suggested, “Why don’t you throw in the towel?” James scoffed at the idea, incredulous.

“What? Give up like a pussy?” It was the end of a sedate night at the bar, the crowd sparse two weeks after the debauchery of New Year’s Eve when most people were still making an effort to honor their resolutions to cut back on excesses like drinking until the Super Bowl in February. James stood at the cash register logging in the evening’s take while Andy scrubbed down the counter. The twins were back at university and Jean-Louis was back home…sort of. Andy’s eyebrows had shot up and then knitted together when James revealed that Jean-Louis had set up residence in the guest house. “He’ll come around. He’s just pissed at me, that’s all.” 

“Bro, you punched him in the face,” Andy stated bluntly. “That doesn’t paint a picture of marital bliss.” 

“Oh, yeah?” James retorted. “We’re still banging like teenagers. How’s that for marital bliss?” Though he told Andy most things because he trusted him and they’d both had their ups and downs, he had conveniently omitted any details about the non-consensual sex that had prompted the latest rift with Jean-Louis. Some things were better left unspoken. 

“How about manslaughter, dude?” Andy prodded. “Have you ever thought about that?” 

“Are you kidding me? You think I’m a murderer now?” 

Andy gathered up the damp bar towels and tossed them into the bin for laundry pickup. “Not murder, manslaughter. There’s a difference. You kill him by accident, how are you going to live with that?” There was no one there except the two of them, so Andy lit up a cigarette and cranked up the little air purifier tucked behind the bar. He’d known people to do all sorts of things in the heat of passion, and he’d seen all too clearly the way Jean-Louis would push James’s buttons. James was a proud man—jealous, possessive, controlling—but Jean-Louis seemed oblivious to all this, or perhaps he was just idiotically reckless, especially with this most recent revelation regarding him fathering children with Kerrie. Something had to give eventually. “All I’m saying is: maybe it’s better to cut your losses than lose it all.” 

James smiled and shook his head. “You don’t know him like I do, Andy. Everyone thinks I’m just some fool…my mom, my ex, my agent. Shit…sometimes I ask myself: why do I put up with it? Why do I let him get away with being the most selfish, slutty motherfucker on the planet?”

“Uh…well, that might be _half_ of the problem…”

“But, you see, that’s the challenge," James continued, ignoring Andy's thinly veiled accusation. "That’s the mountain I’ve got to climb. He’s my goddamn Mount Everest. And one day, I’m going to make it to the top, even if I have to stand on both our corpses, I’m going to win. My baby wouldn't want it any other way.” 

*** 

Jean-Louis had gone back to the office the day after New Year’s and told his lie with a disarming smile, gamely accepted the ribbing from his colleagues and staff about his ‘accident’ on the slopes. He had spoken to the kids the evening before, assured them that he needed a week to get his head together and then he’d be back home to spend time with them. The bruise on his cheek would still be there, but at least his in-laws wouldn’t see it. He had already determined that he should leave James, but how? And for how long? The truth was, he couldn’t see himself cut off from James completely—not with the children between them acting as the mortar to the brick of their crumbling facade—but he _could_ imagine a life apart from James, a life where they each went their own separate ways and perhaps sent a gift at Christmas or on a birthday as a sign of their amicable separation. And in this fantastical life they would bear no animosity; no, they would be almost insouciant in their goodwill, their _adultness_. They would be utterly _French_ in their dealings with each other. It was a shame that these ridiculous thoughts had always materialized when Jean-Louis was plastered. The painkillers and vodka had worked like a magic elixir after he had left Elijah’s hotel room, and the pot had made him ignore the rest of his worries afterwards. But his boss at work—an older woman who was as sharp as a boning knife—was no fool. She called him into her office for a chat after New Year’s when Jean-Louis requested a few months of limited travel. She made no direct comment about his black-eye. Instead, she let Jean-Louis hang himself.

“My youngest son, Marcel…he’s going to be seventeen this spring and he’s going through…well, you know how it is. You’ve raised teenagers.” Jean-Louis nodded at the framed photos of her children sitting on her desk. “I think I need to be here.”

“I understand. I’ve been there with my own kids. I know what it’s like. I’ll have Terence handle the overseas trips, but…” She sat forward in her chair and tented her fingers in front of her face. “I want you to get some counseling. There’s no shame in it. I’ll have HR set up a meeting with you and I expect you to comply with their recommendations. If you need to take a leave of absence, you don’t need to hesitate.” At that, his boss leaned back, putting more distance between her and a red-faced Jean-Louis. “I don’t want to lose you, Jean-Louis. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be putting both of us in this awkward position. Do you understand?” 

Holy hell…this was beyond embarrassing. His own boss could see right through him. Was it that obvious? “I understand,” Jean-Louis said, if only to get the hell out of her office.

It was almost laughable when he went home and James pleaded with him to see a counselor. As if he had a choice! He’d lose his job if he didn’t agree to sessions with a therapist. 

“Fine. I’ll do it,” Jean-Louis told him. He figured he could kill two birds with one stone; he could use this as an opportunity to appease his employer and escape a relationship that had gone down the toilet. James wanted them to see a marriage counselor on the demands of his own mother and the advice of his therapist, Dr. Kogan.

“He recommended someone in Aurora,” James said. “It’s just ten minutes from your office. We can meet with her during your lunch hour if it makes it easier for you.”

The idea was enough to make Jean-Louis double over in hysterical laughter, and he would have if he had already hit his pot stash, but as it was, he was standing in their walk-in closet sorting his laundry and mildly stunned by how everything was dovetailing so nicely. If an objective third party recommended separation, then that would be his ticket to freedom. He would stay close to home for the next few months, preparing Marcel for the inevitable; then, when the time was right, he’d make his move.

***

“You fucking French are responsible for the Smurfs!” James accused.

“Mon dieu, why are you blaming me for _that_?” Jean-Louis shot back.

Their couples’ therapist, Dr. Anna Ferraro, pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and rolled her shoulders. Her neck was killing her. Her most recent clients were killing her. “Gentlemen,” she said firmly, using her kindergarten teacher’s voice, “we agreed that the ‘you’ word would not be used. Let me remind you to use the ‘I’ or ‘me’ word instead when expressing your feelings and opinions, your needs and wants, your—”

James, who was practically out of his chair with irritation, committed another therapy violation by interrupting her when he turned to Jean-Louis with a finger pointing at his own chest, fuming, “Okay, _I_ say the fucking French are responsible for the Smurfs!” 

“The Smurfs are not my responsibility!” screamed Jean-Louis. “Stop blaming me for such ridiculous shit, you goddamn tool!” 

“Oh, _I’m_ a tool?” James reached over and grabbed the front of Jean-Louis's shirt and shook him roughly. “Well, this _tool_ is going to be shoved up your ass when we get home, you little bastard. I’m going to make you fucking _eat_ it!”

“Gentlemen, please!” shouted Dr. Ferraro. “This is not how adults speak to each other!”

“He’s being a fucking _baby_!” James protested, stabbing the air with his finger in Jean-Louis’s direction.

Outside in the parking lot, Jean-Louis couldn’t contain his glee. He was laughing even as he got into his car and turned the ignition. The old BMW rumbled to life and he peeled off without even glancing back in his rearview mirror to see James standing by his SUV, kicking the tires and denting the hood with his fist. After ten weeks, Dr. Ferraro recommended that they discontinue the joint sessions and, more importantly, that they consider a trial separation. Jean-Louis had been living in the guest house ever since James’s parents had left after the holidays, but now he had been given the green light practically to leave.

“I knew it would come to this,” Jean-Louis told James as they stormed out of Dr. Ferraro’s office for the final time.

“This is what you wanted all along, isn’t it?” James accused. “You only agreed to this because you knew she would fall for your…your…dishonesty!”

“I didn’t tell her a single lie!” Jean-Louis declared.

“You didn’t even try! You didn’t even try to work with me on this! Fucking hell, Jean-Louis. All this time I’ve been the only one trying to save this marriage, and you—”

“You’re the only one who wanted it, James. You’ve always gotten your way. Everything you want, you _take_. Don’t act like you’re the victim.”

“Oh, so _you’re_ the victim? You’re nothing but a spoiled, selfish brat! Even our own goddamn kids have never acted like you!” 

“Well, thank god for that, right? You should be glad I won’t be around anymore to fuck up my own son’s life. You never…you never let him be mine.”

James was flabbergasted, his mouth slack with disbelief. In that moment, he truly wanted to wring the life out of Jean-Louis. “You are so fucking ungrateful. If it weren’t for me, who knows what would have happened to that kid. Can you imagine? Marcel raised by your bitch of a mother? I didn’t steal him and you know it! How dare you accuse me of taking away something you never could appreciate in the first place. You’ve had all these years to do the right thing but you never did. You never do the right thing!” 

The words found their mark and stung deeply. He and Marcel had been strangers to each other when Jean-Louis had married James; to hold this small child and see his acceptance grow day-by-day had been a relief and joy. Through the years Jean-Louis had hoped and then felt certain that they had become father and son, but now it was undeniable that Marcel was growing up and detaching himself as all children do, pushing him away even. Though he had cut back on travel that spring in order to spend more time with Marcel, the boy was hardly ever home, and if he was, he’d be locked up in his bedroom with Kensuke. It was absurd to lay the blame at someone else’s feet. James was right. Marcel didn’t need him; maybe he never needed him in the first place. Marcel had James, after all, the man who had raised him, cared for him, been there in all the ways Jean-Louis had not.

***

Two months later, a birth and a death finally gave Jean-Louis both an excuse and the impetus to leave.

“We named her Simone,” Kerrie said. 

To Jean-Louis’s ears, Kerrie sounded tired but happy. It was early May and she had given birth to their second daughter twelve hours ago. “Ah. Simone…as in de Beauvoir?” he asked.

“Bien sûr. Who else? Do you approve?” 

“Oui. I approve. Does Stephanie like it?”

“She should. She’s the one who picked the name.” They both laughed, and then Kerrie asked, “So, has he come around to the idea of you being a father without his fucking permission?”

Jean-Louis sighed, an exhalation layered with equal parts frustration, resignation, and amusement. “Well, he hasn’t killed me yet.”

“You feel guilty?” asked Kerrie. “Don’t. You and your stupid Catholic guilt.”

“It’s not that,” Jean-Louis was quick to object. “I worry about him. He’ll be all alone.”

“What about Marcel? He’s with him.” 

“I know. But it isn’t fair. And besides, Marcel has Kensuke…James has work and nothing else.” 

“Who knows? Maybe he’ll take on a new lover if you actually left him for good.”

“Would he?” Jean-Louis wondered aloud. The thought had never occurred to him, and the pain and panic in his heart surprised him even more. He had spent so much time thinking about escaping, he had never considered how it would feel if James no longer pursued him. The equivocation didn’t last for long, though, because two days later, his godfather Henry Wallace died after a second massive stroke. Jean-Louis flew out to London, his conscience clear.

Henry’s widow, Joan, gave Jean-Louis a sealed envelope after the funeral service, when they were sipping martinis at the club frequented by Cambridge fellows where the reception was being held. Henry’s personal collection of trilobite fossils was already packed in a crate to be shipped to Jean-Louis’s address in the States.

“Henry wanted you to have this. Open it, won’t you?” Joan encouraged him. “I’m dying to know what’s in it.”

It was a bucket list. Jean-Louis recognized both his father’s handwriting, along with Henry’s, written on stationery with the Cambridge University crest. At the top in cursive were the words: _Sites to be visited before we—Charles Lamarck and Henry Wallace—die_. It seemed incomprehensible that two men still in their mid-twenties would have composed a freaking bucket list. Wasn’t this something only _old_ men thought about, men nearing the end of their lives? Then again, Jean-Louis had been barely twenty-five when he had been diagnosed with cancer, the same age his father and Henry had been when they had drafted this list. He read down the list of names of various sites around the world, all of them famous for their cache of fossil remains. Some of them he knew for a fact that his father and Henry had visited after being awarded their doctorates; others…well…his father had died before those places could be seen in person.

“What a gift,” Jean-Louis murmured. He handed Joan the list so she could read it with her own eyes and downed the rest of his martini to keep from crying. His father was gone, and now his surrogate father was gone, too. His marriage was in a shambles, but now he had _this_ , something to give him purpose and perhaps direct him _somewhere_ instead of nowhere. All the places his father and Henry had never had opportunity to visit in their lifetimes, he’d go in their stead. “I miss him,” Jean-Louis said, hugging Joan closely. “My father. It was the best years of my life.” He didn’t have to tell Joan that he meant _both_ of them—Charles _and_ Henry; she understood. They had both been fathers to him, men who loved freely and without judgment, men who knew when a boy was lost and were willing to hold out a hand and lead the way. Is this what he had needed all along? A man to lead the way? To protect him from harm, protect him from himself? As he clutched Joan to his chest, Jean-Louis asked himself the question he had never had the courage to admit openly: had he wanted James to give him what was impossible, and had he punished him for what he had no right to demand? He had called James ‘daddy’ time and again. What did he really want? Protection? Comfort? Safety? His own father had given him those things, and when he died, he took it all with him. There was no going back. As much as Jean-Louis wanted to stop time and remain in the warm embrace of his father’s arms, his sister beside him, it was all gone, all lost to death. So what was left? James…the children…was it enough? He didn’t know. It seemed so easy…to close his eyes and never open them again. There would be no regrets then…he would be reunited with Charlotte…Charlotte. Would she smile at him? Would she kiss him and caress his cheek like she used to? Would they make love so he could finally feel whole once more?

He returned home and spoke first to Marcel about his plans, then he called the twins to explain what he was doing. The next day, he submitted his request for a leave-of-absence from work. It was granted. Three days after that, plane tickets purchased, he packed a suitcase while James was at the bar and left him a note on the dresser:

 _Going to see my daughters. Will be in China after that and a few other places. Don’t worry about me_.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really sorry about how unfocused and all-over-the-place this chapter is, but my life is rather nuts right now and I guess my writing is just a reflection of this. Ugh.


	28. Hold My Hand and Don't Let Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James finds a way back to Jean-Louis.

James was in his basement gym at the punching bag when he suddenly realized it was Jean-Louis’s body he imagined pummeling with his fists during his workout. He stopped mid-jab, fairly stunned by the revelation before the sting of sweat rolling down his forehead and into his eyes jolted him out of contemplation. “Th’ fuck!” As if to dispel such a ludicrous thought, he slammed his right fist into the bag, then his left, six times in quick succession. He had every right, every fucking right to be angry. “That was totally chicken shit!” James shouted, as if Jean-Louis could hear him. The fury which lay coiled like a serpent in his belly struck again and again with each blow, hissing and spitting venom like a cobra poked with a stick one too many times. That pathetic note that Jean-Louis had left for him a week ago…Jesus Christ…what the hell was _that_? “You couldn’t tell me to my face? You piece of shit!” He punched the bag again and then sat on the bench panting, heat radiating off him in waves of despair. James had left numerous messages—phone calls that went straight to voicemail—and a slew of texts that were mostly expletives just in case Jean-Louis didn’t ascertain the gravity of his most recent crime. He should be used to this, James told himself, god knows it had happened so many times, but each time it didn’t get any easier. It _should_ get easier, but it didn’t, the same way it was never easier each time his team had lost a game when he played for the Broncos. Winning was the only thing that mattered; nothing else counted for shit. Each loss was a scab picked off a wound and left raw and red and more tender than ever. It occurred to him that he could ask Dr. Kogan to up his dosage or maybe give him something extra to send him to la-la-land, but wasn’t that what _women_ did, gobble up their Xanax like candy? He was a man, a man’s man, so he hit the punching bag and the bourbon instead. He had always been a happy drunk, or so he thought, but lately Andy was telling him otherwise. Andy was also the one who had accused him of being a murderer-in-the-making. Not true! He would never kill him, no matter how hurt or angry or betrayed he felt, he would never break him beyond repair.

By summer, a degree of resignation and acceptance had settled into his bones. Marcel was spending the months of July and August in Japan with Kensuke, staying at Kensuke’s grandmother’s home in Sendai. The boy had turned seventeen in May and was certainly old enough to go abroad without James’s supervision. The twins weren’t coming home either. Benjamin was staying in Minneapolis for an internship with the Minnesota Twins’ organization, working out with their trainers and crunching numbers with the Sabermetrics geeks, and Chloe was going to Finland, supposedly to study their national healthcare system. Her current boyfriend was a pre-med student at Boston College and James suspected it was just an excuse to shack up with him there for the summer.

“What can I do?” James said. He was practically living at the bar to keep himself busy. “Jean-Louis’s in fucking China or wherever. He might as well be on the moon. The kids don’t even need me anymore. All I’ve got is this dump and my sweet little muffin.”

Andy crinkled his face in disgust as he watched James kiss Fritzel right on the mouth. James had started carrying the old dog in his arms during the hours before the bar opened, claiming that Fritzel was arthritic and that it was more comfortable for the dog to be held rather than left to stand on his four tiny shaking legs. Whatever. It was still painful to watch such a shameless display of neediness on James’s part. “What about that commercial you’re doing for Old Spice?” asked Andy, trying and failing to inject a shot of carefree cheer into his voice. He was doing his best to keep James afloat, even agreeing to a round of four-ball on the golf course for James’s birthday. Andy never imagined that he’d have to be Jean-Louis’s stand-in, but weirder things had happened in the history of mankind he supposed. “Isn’t that netting you a free trip to LA and a sweet fee?”

“Nah, that fell through,” James muttered. “They opted to go with Mustafa again. Doesn’t matter. My financial advisor says I’m doing okay money-wise…as long as I don’t get divorced.”

“Hmmm…” hummed Andy, pausing briefly to wonder if the rules were different if both spouses were men. “You’d owe him half your filthy lucre, right?”

James snorted. “He makes more money than I do at this point. I’m just living on my savings. Aren’t we?” James asked Fritzel. The dog sneezed in reply. 

“So, he’d owe _you_ half his money, then?” Andy asked.

“I don’t want his money,” James huffed. “I just want him to come home.” In all the years they had been together, they had always kept separate bank accounts, never really merged anything besides their bodies and their laundry. The only things they held in joint custody were the children, and even they would be adults eventually in the legal sense and out of their shared control. James wasn’t so worried about the children being gone. He had already gotten used to the fact that they had their own lives and interests which did not include him. So be it. But Jean-Louis…he could never ever get used to his absence. 

“Why don’t you just…” Andy waved the paring knife in the air as he struggled to articulate his thoughts, but James finished his sentence for him.

“Let him go? Forget about the whole thing? Why don’t I just cut off my right arm instead? Or, better yet, why don’t I just tear my fucking heart out?”

***

Growing up in an upper middle class suburb of Detroit, Michigan, James had only known a handful of classmates in middle and high school whose parents were getting divorced, and in every case the father had been a drunk. James’s own grandfather had been a raging alcoholic, but Grandpa Martin was a happy drunk, like himself, as far as he could remember. His Grandma Alice probably thought otherwise and had died years before his grandfather, as if to say, “ _This_ is what he did to me, the nasty old fucker!” Of course, such insights were only arrived upon years later, when James was an adult himself and his mind was no longer clouded by the kind of idiocy rampant in teen boys. Divorce, though, was not something taken lightly in his family. After all, his Grandma Alice had never divorced her sot of a husband. No. She had hung in there until her dying day, when the cancer had eaten up her organs and she could finally be free of her old coot of a husband.

Is this what Jean-Louis thought of him, James wondered at times, that he was as much of an unwanted burden as his Grandpa Martin had been to his Grandma Alice, even though James never got trashed everyday after breakfast? And, wait a minute, his Grandpa Martin hadn’t even started drinking like a fish until _after_ his wife had died, so…what the fuck? He wasn’t to blame, after all, was he? It was all Jean-Louis and his crazy whore ways. It had never been James’s fault…the way their marriage had gone down the toilet…it was all on Jean-Louis.

James poured himself another finger of bourbon. It was a Tuesday night, just two days before Thanksgiving and his one day off from working at the bar. Of course, he had been working Tuesdays for months now, seven days a week because he had nothing better to do. Marcel was a senior in high school now, still joined at the hip with that Kensuke boy even after spending a whole summer in Japan with him. James had thought they'd be sick of each other at this point, but no. They would be going to the prom together in the spring and, Jesus Christ, James couldn’t even fathom such a thing. Boys going to the prom with boys, girls with girls, as if this were _normal_. What was this world coming to? Everything was so fucked up beyond his comprehension. He had celebrated his birthday in June without his spouse for the first time in years, and now he would likely celebrate Thanksgiving without Jean-Louis as well. The kids would all be home for a few days, but no Jean-Louis. Maybe Christmas? Surely, Jean-Louis would finally come home for Christmas.

Instead, it was James who flew out to Arbois for Christmas, the kids in tow. Jean-Louis wasn’t coming home, but at least he, James and the kids, could go to him.

Jean-Louis looked happy, beautiful, content. Had he taken a new lover? James didn’t ask, just unpacked his suitcase in the upstairs bedroom and then took a shower before going back downstairs for dinner with Jean-Louis’s mother and Uncle Auguste. Jean-Louis’s brothers Paul and Ernst were there with their families and James decided that he would just get drunk on wine and not give a shit. Conversation—in French, of course—floated past him, back and forth between his children and their cousins, between Jean-Louis and his brothers and sisters-in-law, and all the while James behaved himself, eating perfectly roasted loin of venison with a delicious lingonberry-horseradish sauce while his heart yearned for the good old days. But what were the good old days? Maybe it was all just a figment of his imagination, something that he had dreamt up in his sleep. Jean-Louis sat beside him at the dinner table, unchanged even though they had been separated for endless months. His hair was still honey-gold while James was going grey. What kind of joke was this?

Later that night, when they were alone in their room, James asked, “Will you come home with me now? Are you done with this game of yours?”

Jean-Louis rested his arms around James’s shoulders, his eyes still sparkling with the champagne he had drunk with dessert and smiled with genuine warmth. “I’m happy, James. Would you deny that to me?” Jean-Louis leaned in and kissed James, softly, running his tongue against James’s lips, just the way he knew James liked it. “Make love to me…husband.”

“Why?” James asked. “Why do you torture me like this?”

They undressed and then James took Jean-Louis into his arms, and the smooth heat of Jean-Louis’s skin against his own was like a perfect dream dreamt long ago but still vivid in his mind. God, the smell of him, lemons and sunshine, the scent of him curled up his nostrils and into his brain, made James shiver with the most heart wrenching need. “It’s just you, baby,” James groaned as he sucked a deep kiss into Jean-Louis’s throat. The feel of Jean-Louis going rigid against him made him bite into his skin. “God, I want to rip you to shreds.”

“So, do it,” Jean-Louis moaned. “Tear me apart.”

James flipped Jean-Louis onto his stomach, then lifted him onto his knees. He gripped each ass cheek in his hands and spread them, exposing the delicate pink of his entrance. “Fuck. You shameless whore.” He slapped him hard with the flat of his palm, and when Jean-Louis yelped, he slapped him again, even harder. “Louder, you little bitch. Scream for me.” With that, James bent down and clamped his teeth on Jean-Louis’s ass, biting into him firmly but not enough to break skin.

Jean-Louis cried out in surprise but didn’t pull away. Instead, he pushed back against James’s face, egging him on. “Daddy…daddy…hurt me…”

Well, hello. James crouched down and licked a wide wet stripe across Jean-Louis’s entrance before spitting into his quivering hole, then spit onto his cock before lining up. It was going to be a rough ride for both of them but, hey, why the fuck not? They were both drunk—on alcohol, on anger, on resentment. What else was new? James plowed into him, gripping Jean-Louis's hips tightly to gain enough purchase to plunge his cock in deep. It didn’t exactly feel good; not enough lube to make penetration pleasurable for either of them, but this wasn’t about pleasure, was it? This was about fucking all the misery out of them and maybe, just maybe, finding some way back to something good.

“Mon dieu!” Jean-Louis cried into the sheets. It hurt, almost as much as the first time, and the pain was filling him up, filling up all those spaces that ached for satisfaction. “More. Don’t stop. Je veux mourir, James, je veux mourir.”

What was it about the sound of Jean-Louis begging like that, even if the words were incomprehensible to James, that made all the heartache evaporate into thin air? The room echoed with their grunts and cries, the headboard banging into the lathe and plaster wall, and Jean-Louis was practically wailing by the time James drove both of them to orgasm. It felt like the worst and best thing in the world and when James pulled out and finished on Jean-Louis, smearing the last few pulses of cum onto his ass cheeks, it seemed as if he had traveled all this way just to put his stamp on him, just to mark him with what could only be love. "You can run away," James murmured into the side of Jean-Louis's face, "but you'll always come back to me."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Je veux mourir = I want to die.


	29. Home Sweet Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean-Louis's attempts to find a new path might just lead back to James.

 

For James, his love for Jean-Louis was like the tide ebbing and flowing under the pull of the moon, rising and falling but inexorable nevertheless. It wouldn’t cease as long as the moon orbited the earth, as long as the earth had oceans, his love would flow until the next asteroid pushed the earth off-orbit and then it wouldn’t matter anymore. Life and love would finally cease. Jean-Louis, though, was the like moon itself, his love for James waxing and waning over the passage of time. How else to make sense of it? He had left in mid-May—after Marcel’s seventeenth birthday and knowing that the boy would be in Japan that summer with Kensuke—and spent the first five months traveling, first to Palo Alto outside of San Francisco to see Kerrie and Stephanie and meet his two daughters. Their house was slung low and horizontal, non-descript and private behind a wall of wooden slats until one entered into the house itself and the space opened up like a breath of fresh air. It was a mid-century modernist house built by Eichler, and it was everything that James’s house in Denver was not: simple, practical, uncluttered.

Jean-Louis stayed a week with them, holding and kissing his children—one already saying “no” and “mama,” “up” and “bye-bye,” the other wide-eyed and drooling. They were beautiful, his daughters, and not one bit his own. The girls belonged to Kerrie, to Stephanie. He had only provided the sperm and nothing else. Is that what he had been with Marcel? Had he merely been a sperm donor? Marcel had brought him back from the brink of death...and yet the boy had told him, “Go, Papa. Be happy.” He might as well have said, “I have Dad and I have Kensuke. I don’t need _you_.”

“So, what’s next?” Kerrie asked the first night. She was exhausted but beautiful in the way that women were who had given birth recently.

They were having dinner around the table: grilled salmon on a salad of baby greens, Simone—barely two weeks old—held in Kerrie’s arms breastfeeding quietly. Harper Lee was sitting in the high chair eating her dinner with her hands, sucking on her fingers and saying, “Mmm. Good.” 

“China,” he said. “There are several sites I need to visit. Then…Indonesia…Australia. After that…I might go home.” 

“Denver?” asked Stephanie, a little surprised. She had never been able to understand _what_ Jean-Louis saw in James, but perhaps it was the children—Marcel, at least—that would compel him to return to that ridiculously unhealthy situation. She couldn’t imagine ever leaving the girls behind.

“No. Arbois.” He reached for the wine bottle and topped up Stephanie’s glass, then his own. “I have three months’ leave from work and then they are letting me handle the meetings in Europe. My mother is getting frail. I thought I might stay with her awhile, use her house as my base. My brother said I could come.” 

The fact that he called it “her house” rather than “my childhood home” spoke volumes, but Kerrie let that go. Mention of his oldest brother was more disconcerting. “Paul?” Kerrie raised an eyebrow. She knew all about Paul. Jean-Louis had told her everything. “Are you sure? Did he get a lobotomy or something?”

Jean-Louis indulged her with a melancholy laugh. “His wife and him have been on the outs lately. You know how these things go. Besides, he said he could use a little help. It’ll be harvest time when I get there. I could make myself useful.” _For once_. He didn’t say the words aloud but the look Kerrie shot him told him that he might as well have shouted it at the top of his lungs. Stephanie wasn’t so convinced. Kerrie had told her everything, as well.

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” asked Stephanie. Her own father had been a domineering, abusive man and Paul, as well as James, seemed to be cut from the same cloth in her estimation. “Your brother’s always had it out for you. He’s probably pissed off and…I don’t know…he might take it out on you. Why make yourself an easy target?”

The look of concern that passed between Kerrie and Stephanie was lost on Jean-Louis, who was busy pushing his fork through his salad and counting the seconds when dinner was over so he could light up a joint outside. “Paul...he’s always loved me,” Jean-Louis explained in a whisper, “he just has a funny way of showing it.” He smiled at Kerrie, at Stephanie, at his daughters. “That’s what families are for, _ne c’est pas_?” 

***

Marcel watched his Dad make a mid-morning snack for himself: baloney, sweet pickles, and American cheese on white bread. Before James put the second slice of bread on top, he gave it a generous squirt of ketchup and yellow mustard. “Now that’s what I call a sandwich,” James said, slicing it in half and taking a big bite. “I used to eat four of these for lunch when I was in high school. Dee-licious.”

It was almost ten-thirty on a Sunday and his Dad would be heading to the bar soon. It was always busy on a game day and James liked to be there by eleven-thirty to schmooze with the customers about which teams were going to win. Marcel continued to make his maki sushi, carefully assembling the ingredients—rice, cucumber, tamagoyaki, pickled radish, nori sheets—and rolling up each one in the bamboo mat, just the way Kensuke’s mother had showed him. Kensuke was coming over for lunch. They would eat, have sex, do some homework, have sex, play a video game, then finish off with some more sex while they had the house to themselves. What his Dad didn’t see couldn’t hurt him and Marcel wanted to keep it that way. “Do you want one these?” he asked, offering a roll to James. “There’s no raw fish in it.”

“Nah,” James scowled. “I’m not eating that seaweed paper. The egg, though, that’s not bad.” He grabbed a strip of the sweetened egg and scarfed it down in between another bite of his sandwich. Marcel was tall and lanky, his hair styled into a layered mop on his head. James couldn’t believe how much he looked like a teenaged Jean-Louis. “You know, that Kensuke—”

Marcel cut him off with a rare huff of irritation. “Why do you always say ‘ _that_ Kensuke’? As if there’s any other Kensuke around here? Seriously?” 

“Okay, okay, my bad.” James held up his hands in apology, but Marcel wasn’t done with him.

“I know this isn’t what you wanted, Dad, but it’s my life. I love him and I’m not giving him up. You’re just going to have to deal with it.” Marcel sliced the maki roll into eight even pieces, and muttered, “I don’t want to end up like you and Papa.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” James snapped back.

“I mean I don’t want to end up all alone! Is that so bad?” His Papa had been gone for eight months, and though they spoke regularly on the phone and texted back and forth, a part of him felt deeply let down, abandoned, as if his existence wasn’t enough to warrant his father’s presence. Not that he was suffering in any real way, still…perhaps it wounded his ego to not have Jean-Louis tell him in person that he was doing the right thing, to put his hand on his shoulder and say, “I approve.” It seemed like such a stupid thing to want or need. He was going to be eighteen and out of the house before too long; he had already been accepted into Stanford’s biochemistry program. Kensuke would be attending the University of Chicago, studying architecture, and then he would go back to Japan where he would submit to an arranged marriage and settle down to a job at his uncle’s architecture firm in Osaka and live a comfortable life with a wife and children. Kensuke had told him this not long after they started officially ‘dating,’ so high school was basically the end of the line romance-wise for Marcel. After that, he’d have to find someone else. It depressed him, frightened him, but at least he knew it was coming. He had spoken to Chloe a number of times about this looming personal disaster on the horizon, and her advice was always something along the lines of, “Things will only get worse before they get better, so enjoy it while you can.” He didn’t even bother talking to his brother about it. Benjamin had already given his girlfriend Bex an engagement ring during their first semester in college. They would marry as soon as they graduated or when she got knocked up, which ever came first. And forget about talking to his parents. His Papa was more interested in bonding with his two little daughters and traipsing about the world than being a father to him, and his Dad was growing weirder and more manic with each passing month.

Life was going by in a blur it seemed, his time with Kensuke dwindling down quickly. It made him yearn for his Papa somehow. James usually didn’t interfere with things, but he was drinking steadily and was often moody and growing more and more confused and forgetful. It was Marcel who had to remind James to pay a bill or turn off the stove or go to an appointment. He didn’t want to be the parent. Not yet at least; he still wanted both of them to make amends, still needed to know that they would both be alright when he was on his own somewhere else. He still wanted to be a child for just a little longer.

The week after the Super Bowl on a school night, Marcel was in bed, almost drifting to sleep when the sound of a bird chirping startled him to full wakefulness. He lifted his head from the pillow, doubting what he had heard but curious to know what it was. In another moment he heard the same high-pitched trill. It sounded like a Baltimore oriole. He was used to hearing their birdsong during the summers spent in Michigan, but never in Denver in the dead of winter. The singing went on for a good minute and then he heard the first strains of violins playing. The music was coming down the hallway from the master bedroom. His Dad was not inclined to watch nature programs. He was either watching football or hockey or baseball or stock car racing, but not much beyond that, certainly not anything that might be airing on PBS. Marcel pulled the covers over his head and went to sleep, but the next night, there is was again, the same Baltimore oriole trilling away, the same violins playing. It was bizarre. This time, he got up and crept down the hallway and stood in front of his Dad’s closed bedroom door, quietly listening. “Huh.”

In the morning during breakfast, Marcel asked James what he had been listening to. Ever since Jean-Louis had been AWOL, James had made it a point to be home from the bar by eleven at night rather than past two in the morning. Marcel wasn’t a baby anymore, but he was also of an age where he might set up a meth lab in a closet if James didn’t keep an eye on him. Plus, he was still hoping that he’d catch him _in flagrante_ _delicto_ with Kensuke just so he had an excuse to ground him for the rest of his life and thus separate the two boys. After visiting with Jean-Louis over Christmas, however, James found that he couldn’t sleep at night. He didn’t know if the insomnia was due to his recent contact with Jean-Louis; perhaps the excitement of seeing him, touching and kissing him, fucking him after so long a separation was still in his system and driving him nuts. He had called Dr. Kogan and was prescribed Zoloft, which made him too loopy and disoriented and wreaked havoc on his gut. Andy, though, told him that his mother used some kind of white noise machine to help her sleep and brought James a CD to listen to at night.

“It might not work,” Andy said, “but at least it won’t give you ED.” 

“ED might be what I need,” James grumbled. What good was it to wake up every morning with a raging hard-on when there was no Jean-Louis to shove his dick into? His aroused state only made him want to punch a wall. Then, there was the _other thing_. A recent issue of _Esquire_ magazine had featured an ad for Chanel Bleu cologne for men. The scented strip was okay, but it was the image of French actor Gaspard Ulliel that had caught his eye. Ulliel was the face of Chanel Bleu—god knows James had seen the dude’s swarthy visage on the ads at Heathrow—and he had to admit that he was somewhat handsome. He didn’t look anything like his golden angel from hell, but…shit…the guy was fucking _French_ …so…he had stood in the bathroom, the magazine open to the ad, and stroked himself to completion, his cum splattering onto the actor's face before James had quickly wiped it clean with a tissue. He'd need to use that ad more than once.

“I can’t believe I’m jacking it to this motherfucker,” James confessed to Andy, who almost gagged on his glass of club soda.

“TMI, bro!” Andy shouted with dismay. “T. M. I. And will you _please_ stop kissing that dog!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter recounts events that took place BEFORE and AFTER the previous chapter. I'm sorry this story is so convoluted!


	30. A Glimmer of Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It takes his brother Paul to set Jean-Louis on the right path.

 

“Papa?” Marcel’s voice sounded strained and distant. “Can you come home? Fritzel’s not well.”

It wasn’t a lie. The old dog was incontinent and deaf and half-blind. Marcel would often find him stuck under a chair or with his nose pressed to a wall, unable to maneuver backwards. It was easy enough to pick up a ten-pound dog and turn him in the right direction, or simply cuddle him until he fell asleep. It was much harder to steer a two hundred forty-five pound man down the stairs and out the door or keep him from driving down the wrong lane in traffic. Marcel was afraid, and not just for his own life, but he wasn’t sure if his Papa would come home if he said James needed him.  He didn’t know if he should feel so panicked. He only knew he couldn’t deal with this by himself. It was Kensuke who told him, “Just say it’s the dog.”

Kensuke had been with Marcel long enough to understand the dynamics of his family. He was Japanese, after all, and he had grown up to be sensitive to the feelings of others—to anticipate, to predict, to smooth over—and he had seen how his own family had often dealt with hostility or conflict in the most indirect manner. Marcel’s dad was probably the most blatantly direct person he would ever _not_ want to meet, but he also knew how close Marcel was with him, far closer than he was with his biological father. Marcel _loved_ James or, Mr. Miller, as Kensuke always called him. How Marcel felt about Jean-Louis…that was a different matter altogether. Jean-Louis was brilliant in Kensuke’s eyes, almost too beautiful, too distant and uninvolved, but he never got the impression that Marcel _needed_ him…not until now.

So he stood next to Marcel in the kitchen while he spoke to his father in France. James was passed out on the living room sofa. They had arrived at the house after school. The man had fortunately been lying on his stomach and hadn’t choked on his own vomit, otherwise, he might be dead. A call to Andy at the bar had confirmed that James had never showed up at work that day.

“He says he’ll come,” Marcel told Kensuke as he set his phone on the counter. He sat down at one of the stools, exhausted though it was only three-thirty in the afternoon. When Kensuke drew near and embraced him, Marcel let it all go, putting his face into Kensuke’s shoulder and sobbing at last. “God…I hate them so much.”

“Don’t say that,” Kensuke soothed, carding his fingers through the soft, silky strands of Marcel’s hair. His own hair was straight and rather coarse. “They’re still your parents. They still care about you.”

But all Marcel could think was: You’ll leave me, too.

***

He found James in the kitchen with a spoonful of canned dog food in his hand, Fritzel lying on his stomach on the floor with all four legs splayed out. It was obvious to Jean-Louis that the dog was not in any shape to eat and, from the look of things, could no longer stand on his feet.

“James, I’m going to call the vet, okay?”

James nodded, not looking back at him, and continued to offer the spoon to the dog. “C’mon, baby boy, just take one bite. Do it for Daddy.”

They didn’t speak on the way to the vet’s office. James sat in the passenger seat with Fritzel in his lap wrapped in a towel in case he had an ‘accident,’ which he did, passing a tiny turd and then wetting himself. “It’s okay, baby, Daddy’s here,” James soothed, patting the dog on the head.

There were no words exchanged, but they both knew this was going to be a very, very bad day. It seemed almost ludicrous, and yet it was true. Jean-Louis had bought the dog for Chloe, but it was James who had taken care of it. The dog was as much his baby as the children were, and now they were bidding it farewell the week after Jean-Louis had flown back to the States. They both stayed in the examination room when the vet administered the tranquilizer first, and then the injection that would stop Fritzel’s heart. It was fifteen minutes before they could bear to let the nurse remove the dog’s body. James waited outside in the car while Jean-Louis paid the bill, asked for Fritzel’s ashes to be put in the nicer container, his named etched on a brass plaque. Then he joined James in the car and wept. They held hands and cried over their lost dog, cried over all the moments they had squandered out of stupidity and foolishness. James hadn’t asked him to come home—it was Marcel who had done that—but now Jean-Louis put it to James formally.

“May I come back?” He was sobbing and blowing his nose into a wad of Kleenex while James did the same. “Will you have me?”

James squeezed his hand tighter, then kissed it, getting snot all over his knuckles. Yes. He’d have him back. 

***

There were times when it didn’t matter if they were getting along or if they were fighting. If Jean-Louis were drunk or high _just so_ , then he would give James everything he wanted. _Everything_ usually started with a blowjob: Jean-Louis kneeling between James’s thighs and sucking down on his cock, swirling his tongue around the crown and across the slit before licking up and down the thick shaft, all the while palming James’s heavy balls with one hand, caressing a thigh or knee with the other. It wasn’t just James who would be turned on beyond belief. Taking James’s dick into his mouth always made Jean-Louis ache with the need to submit, to offer the deepest part of himself, to open himself to James and scream his name. He would always come hard, his body shaking apart as James took him without mercy, and afterwards they would both sleep well, exhausted and spent. The next morning, reality would set in again with all its petty dissatisfaction, but at least they had this, the moments when reality was pushed aside and a man’s cock could bring about the kind of cathartic release rendered in the past on an ancient Greek stage.

It had taken all these years and the brutality of his brother Paul for Jean-Louis to finally recognize what he had done…to himself and to James. During the months he had lived at his mother’s house, Paul had often visited, staying for dinner at first, and then showing up for breakfast and lunch, too. Paul’s wife had moved back with her elderly parents three towns over, or so she said. He suspected that she was living with a current lover. Paul's own mistress had decided his belligerence was tiresome and was gone, too. With the children grown and married, Paul figured that it was worth the annoyance of seeing his youngest brother on a daily basis if it meant that he wouldn’t have to prepare his own meals. There were other reasons, as Jean-Louis found out, reasons that seemed to materialize when Paul was drunk, which was most evenings. He was drunk, too, most evenings, which only added to the fun.

Jean-Louis was using his brother Ernst’s old room and he wasn’t exactly surprised the first time Paul let himself in and flopped onto his back on the bed. It was late and Jean-Louis had already washed up and was ready to sleep. He would be traveling to Frankfurt the next day for meetings and wanted to be rested. “Are you planning on staying at Mama’s tonight?” Jean-Louis asked. “If you are, use the sofa in the den. This bed isn’t big enough for both of us.”

Paul had grunted and sat up slowly, rubbing a hand across a face flushed with too much drink. “Come here, little brother.” He reached out and beckoned, as if he were motioning a child to approach. When Jean-Louis remained standing by the dresser, Paul scowled and stood with a groan. He was getting to be arthritic—the wear and tear of years of physical labor was beginning to show—but he was also still muscular and fit for a man in his mid-fifties, and just as threatening as he had been when they were both children. “Papa always loved you best,” he murmured, tilting Jean-Louis’s face up with his thumb and forefinger on his chin. 

They weren’t children anymore, but Jean-Louis still shrank back from him, the knobs on the dresser digging into his back as Paul crowded him. Jean-Louis could smell the alcohol heavy on his breath and turned his face aside. Paul brought his hand down to Jean-Louis’s throat, gently wrapped his long fingers around his neck and slowly squeezed before releasing his hand when he felt Jean-Louis convulse. “You’ve always liked that, haven’t you?” Paul said, his mouth right at Jean-Louis’s ear. “You’ve always liked being put in your place.” He reached down and palmed Jean-Louis’s cock through the thin fabric of his sleep shorts. Jean-Louis froze, panic sweeping through him, all the air knocked out of him. “Did you really think we couldn’t hear you? All the things you did with Charlotte?” Paul brought his hand back up to Jean-Louis’s neck and squeezed once again, just enough to let Jean-Louis know he meant it. “You loved going to church with Mama. You loved sitting there all wide-eyed and innocent. But you were never innocent, Jean-Louis.” Paul rubbed his chin against Jean-Louis’s cheek, letting the rough stubble of his trimmed beard chafe a little. “Is that why you married that man?”

Jean-Louis gagged and tried to cough as his brother’s hand clenched and then relaxed around his throat. Oh god, if Paul knew about him and Charlotte, did he know about Marcel, too? All he could say, though, was, “James. He’s waiting for me.”

“That disgusting American _pig_.” Paul let go of Jean-Louis’s throat, drew back to give himself some space, and then landed a heavy blow on the dresser next to Jean-Louis’s ribs with his fist. Paul’s own face was crumpled in what could only be sadness. “Thank god Papa died before he ever knew about you. It would have killed him.”

He had never seen his eldest brother cry, and the sight of Paul’s teary eyes made Jean-Louis gape in wonder. “Are you really my brother?” asked Jean-Louis. He didn’t even know why he asked; perhaps it was something he had always suspected, something he had always questioned, the fact that he and Charlotte had blond hair and blue eyes like their mother, but Paul and Ernst had red hair and hazel eyes like their Uncle Auguste.  And their father Charles…who had he been? 

“What do I know?” Paul rasped, trailing a finger roughly down Jean-Louis’s face, down his neck to clutch at his throat once more. “He loved you best. And all you ever did was…waste his love.”

Paul let him go at last with a defeated exhale of breath. Jean-Louis had gone to Frankfurt the next day, knowing that he would never see Paul again. He didn’t know how to feel. It was all so stupid. What good was love, was life, if one was never honest? When Marcel called him and told him the dog was ill, he felt as though the universe had handed him a reprieve once more, a way out, or maybe a way back home.

“I’ll come,” Jean-Louis told Marcel. He kept his voice low, steady, reassuring. “Don’t worry. I’ll be home as soon as possible. And…I’ll stay, Marcel. I won’t leave Daddy ever again.”

 


End file.
